It seemed like a good idea at the time to attend three family medicine conferences in a row, in the same place (NAPCRG/AAFP/WONCA** in Orlando) — it would be an efficient use of my time. However, by the time an excellent NAPCRG was finished, I was all but ‘conferenced out’ — and only halfway through the papers to be presented over the next 3 days.
Fortunately, help was at hand when I attended an excellent mid-conference session entitled ‘Physician Heal Thyself and then the World’. This was described as a workshop on ‘workaholism, helpaholism, and other physician conditions’ and ‘playful but effective medication for serious symptoms’. It was run by Janet Christie-Seely, one of the most respected family therapists in the world, and packed full of powerful insights and useful skills training. We reviewed some of the current understanding of the construction of personality particularly applied to doctors and, by way of a ‘dynamic family sculpture’, finished with the ‘12 steps’ (after Alcoholics Anonymous) for health professionals on ‘building healthy attitudes and coping strategies’.1 This experience gave me ‘permission’ (if that were needed!) to take half a day off and visit the Kennedy Space Center. Here I was able to live out my adolescent fantasies of the 1960s. JFK's 1961 ambition to put a man on the moon ‘within a decade’ because we ‘choose to go’ inspired many an idealistic teenager — I thoroughly enjoyed recalling those days in the place where it had all happened.
The other highlights of the conferences, for me, were the plenaries from Barbara Starfield — who is always ‘good value’ on why family medicine is indispensible to the quality of health care provided to patients — and from Pekka Puska, who spoke about the classic success of the strategy for reducing the burden of ischaemic heart disease in Karelia, Finland. The bravest and most moving contribution that I heard during WONCA came from a family physician from Zimbabwe who described the conditions under which she works, where rape is being used as a tool of political oppression.
Footnotes
↵**A beginner's guide to abbreviations …
UK = United Kingdom
NAPCRG = North American Primary Care Research Group
AAFP = American Assocation of Family Practitioners
WONCA. .. Er, that's enough abbreviations. Dep Ed.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2004.