Positive feedback

I have been really happy to hear such positive feedback and comments from both the medical fraternity and non-medics after my BMJ Opinion piece went online. So thank you to Kelly Brendel, assistant editor at the BMJ, for her help in making this happen.  It has been shared on social media and will this week also be an abridged column in BMJ magazine, and I sense that I have voiced what many have been thinking, whilst doing so at a time when voluntary career breaks by junior doctors happens to have also hit the headlines, and career breaks were a topic du jour on the doctors.net forum just ahead of my article going live.. I have had such valid comments, including from colleagues who have as good as retired, wishing that it hadn't taken until retirement to have their career break!  An interesting response also came from a British GP in Sydney, who pointed out that long service leave is a legal entitlement for doctors in Australia where they accrue 2+ months of paid leave for every 10 years worked, sometimes 5. It is expected that you will use it, and is often enforced that it is taken when due.  Indeed a different attitude to life and work over there, and is it any wonder that our docs head to their shores in pursuit of these working attitudes..positive in so many ways.  So let's try and keep our docs here, and make our way of working in our precious profession as life- and health-affirming as possible..for ourselves, our families, our colleagues, and of course our patients.