Happy Holidays! I hope you, like me, have gotten at least one of the festive weekends off work. Regardless of your religious persuasion, a few days of rest and some social gatherings tends to make for a rewarded soul. If you are super lucky, you may even have BOTH holidays off and an opportunity to re-acquaint yourself with some hobbies.
This week’s wonderpost is a holiday-season extra-long edition. Get ready for a review of the best reads of 2017, some fun articles and other tid-bits.
Before getting in to all of the fun, I have a special request for your all. The new clinical year will be upon us before we know it and it’s time to reflect on how we can all work better together. Do you have tips for new interns starting work? Do you have tips and tricks for first-time registrars or consultants? What do you hope to do better yourself as you continue your career? Send us through tips at doctorsarehuman1@gmail.com or through our facebook page. We will collate the suggestions into posts in the new year.
A lot of things have happened in 2017. Looking through news articles, picture reels and wiki articles to give you a run down, there are too many things that can make one lose hope in humanity. Instead, of giving you just the big moments like these, here are some of my best moments from the year. One of my friends landed a dream job, several (including myself) passed big exams, I bought a saxophone and am learning to play, I got to see sunrises while driving to Sydney at stupidly early hours of the morning, Canberra has almost non-existent traffic, I made some excellent new friends and I’ve tried a lot of new things this year. Best decisions: deciding to crack down and do a bajillion courses and exams; deciding to become a powerlifter; deciding to pay for other people to cook for me (I’m seriously in danger of becoming a tea-and-toaster otherwise). Worst decision: buying too much sports attire, including a wetsuit (don’t ask, I can’t explain that one). What have been your best moments and worst decisions?
Best reads of 2017 –
If you’re like me, you struggle to put a book down and sometimes forget that the characters in books aren’t actually your real friends. I’ve read an awful lot of books this year. Here are some of our top book recommendations:
- Still Alice by Lisa Genova
- Infectious by Prof Frank Bowden
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A biography of cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Originals: How non-conformists move the world by Adam Grant
- Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
- Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
- Hunger by Roxane Gay
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
I’ve taken to listening to podcasts on long drives. Here are some of our top picks:
- The Curbsiders – internal medicine with a bit of humour. My favourites are those with The Kidney Boy, Dr Joel Topf.
- Behind the Knife – tips and tricks for surgical practice
- Stuff you should know – all the things you asked as kids, got told to look up (or stop asking) and never figured out
- Planet Money – because we all know health professionals are (generally) financially illiterate
And, not to break tradition, here are some articles worth reading this week:
- Who is the best country of the year? France is! (according to the Economist, that is)
- Scientists think there’s an inverse relationship between glacial coverage and the number of volcanic eruptions
- Some older-persons’ care facilities are using virtual reality to help train staff
- For those of you who like cute things, here are elephants wearing woolly jumpers.
And, to top off the year, here are far too many cute pictures of animals.
May you have a wonderful final week to 2017. Here’s to a bigger, better, more fulfilling 2018.
