#161 Bringing Joy Back into Medicine with Professor Dame Clare Gerada

23rd Aug 2022

Today I’m talking to Prof Dame Clare Gerada about enabling our doctors and nurses to flourish and how to reignite the passion and bring the joy back into medicine.

I learnt so much about Clare today. Her background living in Africa, her dad’s medical career and how she keeps going, working in the same practice for decades as well as her brave admission of how burnout affected her personally.

Professor Dame Clare Gerada has more than 35 years experience practising medicine, and has been a driving force behind efforts to provide more wellbeing support for NHS staff. As well as being the first female Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in 50 years, Clare has held leadership roles with the Department of Health and is on the Council of the British Medical Association.

Our chat covers:

• What’s not working in the current system of care & how we rectify it
• Open science and the pandemic
• The constant blaming of GPs
• Over-medicalisation
• Her own experience with burnout
• How uncaring the system is towards medical staff
• Some tips to maintain joy and optimism
• The limitations of resilience training and why the emphasis needs to be on changing the system rather than locating the problem in medical staff

Her book is Beneath the White coat.