May top picks: politics, psychological safety, and creativity

As a teenager, I was always a little “too political.” If I hadn’t studied medicine, I might have found myself getting stuck into the different, but perhaps equally strange world of politics. These dual interests have influenced my year at The BMJ, but also how I approach my medical degree. I’ve always seen medicine as inherently political: growing up in a post-conflict Northern Ireland, so much of the world around me, and the health of the society around me, was intertwined with its political context. Although my 18 year old self tied herself firmly to the medicine wall—partially through disbelief that I was accepted onto the course in the first place—I still find myself geeking out over the coming election season, and wondering what the consequences will be for patients, for students like myself, or for the 350 students taking up the additional medical school places funded by the government who will start their studies as the new government comes to power later this summer.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to afford to complete a medical degree. Students typically take out large student loans, which we need to repay with high interest rates. Perhaps the next government will consider offering some forgiveness of this student loan debt in return for continuing NHS service, as I proposed in an opinion piece. This would mark a stark change in direction for policy makers, who currently seem more focused on recruiting medical students than on retaining medical graduates. Another opinion piece argued that the 1000 or so “placeholder jobs” that have been allocated to medical graduates not only undermine the wellbeing of individual doctors, but also their value to the NHS.

The sharp scratch podcast delved into the importance of feeling valued at work, with “Freedom to speak up” tackling the complex issue of psychological safety with specialised foundation doctor Gabrielle Mathews. We heard some clips from Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, who originated the concept of psychological safety in the workplace, and Gabrielle helped us to contextualise it in our work and learning. It was refreshing to speak candidly about failure, and how we can help to create an environment where we do feel safe to speak up if we make mistakes, and where we can feel respected and valued.

A lighter podcast episode, “Is there room for creativity in medicine,” looked at the opportunities for us to explore our more creative side, and in that episode we heard from poets, artists, and musicians in medicine, who have each applied their talents to their clinical or academic work. It brought together three editorial scholars and several creative medics who I have looked up to since long before I began working at The BMJ. Although politics piqued my interest in medicine, my first foray into journalism was as a music critic. After arriving at medical school in a tiny university town in a new country, without knowing any doctors, my first friends at university weren’t medical students but rather the music section of SCAN, the university newspaper. This made the episode an especially fun one for me to record, and it was good to hear that I never need to leave behind my creative side to work in medicine.