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

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.

You can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.

Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.

We would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode.

Check out the recipes and app here: https://apple.co/37PvMMX

Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan here: https://thedoctorskitchen.com/newsletter/

Check out the socials here: https://www.instagram.com/doctors_kitchen/