Annual Primary Care Conference Poster
Poems for doctors is showing a poster at the Royal College of General Practitioners Annual Primary Care Conference in Glasgow on 4-6 October 2018.
In case you can’t make it to the SEC Centre in Glasgow you can see the poster here. The eagle-eyed amongst you might spot an announcement about a new competition that we are planning (you’ll find out more about that here soon!)
Also, we’ve compiled a sample collection of three readings just for conference visitors to our poster. This includes The Guest House by Rumi read by Dr Imogen Murray which will be included in our next season of online readings.
Congratulations…
We’re going to be working away on preparing Season 3 of ‘Poems for Doctors’ soon, and we also hope to have exciting news about something a little different happpening shortly.
In the meantime, it has been graduation season, so here is a collection of photos showing the idea that started our project in the first place – graduates receiving copies of ‘Tools of the Trade: Poems for Doctors’. These 2018 graduates are receiving copies of the anthology at the School of Medicine in St Andrews as they complete their degree course here.
Night Sister
On its 70th Anniversary of we celebrate the foundation of the UK National Health Service with the final reading of our current season. Happy Birthday NHS!
A big thank-you to all of our medical readers, to our colleagues at Scottish Poetry Library who have helped with tricky legal matters about securing permissions, and most of all to everyone who has watched and listened to the readings. We hope to be back again before long with some new readings, and perhaps some other new additions to the project. If you have any suggestions or comments you would like to make, we’d be delighted to hear from you, please get in touch.
This poem is part of the Poems for doctors project. You can find out more about the project here.
Season 2 : poem 8
Hospital trainee doctor Chris Lowe reads Night Sister by Elizabeth Jennings
Night Sister
Elizabeth Jennings
How is it possible not to grow hard,
To build a shell around yourself when you
Have to watch so much pain, and hear it too?
Many you see are puzzled, wounded; few
Are cheerful long. How can you not be scarred?
To view a birth or death seems natural,
But these locked doors, these sudden shouts and tears
Graze all the peaceful skies. A world of fears
Like the ghost-haunting of the owl appears.
And yet you love that stillness and that call.
You have a memory for everyone;
None is anonymous and so you cure
What few with such compassion could endure.
I never met a calling quite so pure.
My fears are silenced by the things you’ve done.
We have grown cynical and often miss
The perfect thing. Embarrassment also
Convinces us we cannot dare to show
Our sickness. But you listen and we know
That you can meet us in our own distress.
Rights:Â from Collected Poems ed Emma Mason (Carcanet Press Ltd, 1987) by permission of David Higham Associates
A moderated Facebook group hosts discussion for medics and others who would like to follow up on ideas arising from ‘Poems for Doctors’.
To ask to join, or add to the discussion if you are already a member, please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/poemsfordoctors/
Striking the right note
Scottish Medical Humanities is a project that aims to enrich the experience of healthcare practitioners, students and trainees. Their summer event, called “Differing ways of seeing: what medical humanities can offer” took place in St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh last week. It was an evening of performance and discussion to celebrate humanities in healthcare education.
We set up the Poems for Doctors kiosk in the beautiful Music Museum there, and visitors seemed to enjoy taking some quiet moments to listen to several poems.
Ecclesiastes 3, i-viii
This poem is part of the Poems for doctors project. You can find out more about the project here.
Our second season of readings will come to a close with one more poem on Thursday 5th July this week, coinciding with the 70th Anniversary of the UK’s National Health Service.
Season 2 : poem 7
Medical student Nicola Hall reads Ecclesiastes 3, i-viii from the Bible
Ecclesiastes 3, i-viii
Anon. (The Bible)
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
A moderated Facebook group hosts discussion for medics and others who would like to follow up on ideas arising from ‘Poems for Doctors’.
To ask to join, or add to the discussion if you are already a member, please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/poemsfordoctors/
Season 4
Season 3
Season 2
Season 1
