June Reads

Three amazing books for June in addition to our Thriving Doctor bookclub.

I listened to Active Hope audiobook by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone.

It might be the most important book I have read at this moment in time: mid-pandemic, planet-wide environmental disaster, and my own evolution. The beginning of this book is distressing and discouraging and then the authors paint a way forward that genuinely cultivated hope in me as the listener.

I truly feel inspired to keep going with the work of helping people connect so that we can create a better world for the future after listening to this book. As we work with leaders in healthcare I look forward to sharing the ideas and inspirations of these wise elders.
 

I recommend this book to you with the highest regard.

@drnikkistamp worked as a cardiothoracic surgeon. Her memoir Scrubbed won’t suit everyone.
 

I am enormously grateful to the many doctors now sharing their stories in memoir format. Members of the public may be shocked by what they read and learn. I hope some of the medical fraternity and the leaders of healthcare make some time to reflect on these stories too.

Healthcare is in crisis, we can not afford to train and then lose our doctors because of poor culture and unreasonable expectations.
 

Everyone can review their expectations - the doctors themselves, as Dr. Stamp does in her book, their employers and colleagues, and their patients.
 

As members of the community we also need to review our expectations of healthcare, we can no longer claim to be ignorant of the sacrifice doctors make as they take care of us.
 

I am grateful to Nikki Stamp for sharing some of her experiences as a doctor with us and for the work she has done to date caring for patients, literally saving their lives, and now for her work to improve the system, especially for female doctors.

The Yield by @tara_june_winch is powerful and subtle at the same time, teaching me about black and white Australia, and engendering curiosity in me as the reader. Provoking new insights and opening my field of vision about the history of Australia and its people.
 

I have so much to learn and can’t wait to discuss this clever novel at my other Bookclub.