I've been especially fortunate in my choices of mentors on several occasions. At other times I've had support and encouragement from colleagues, usually my seniors, who were not mentors but nevertheless gave me good advice at times when I needed it.
This first happened during my last two years or so in the Western Clinic, the 10-partner group practice in which I was the newly recruited most junior partner. Clarrie Rieger, one of the most senior partners, a surgeon whom I'd first met when he'd been one of my teachers in medical school, was an eminent medical politician, president of the Australian Medical Association, negotiating with the federal government about conditions and fee for service payments in the tax-supported medical benefits system that had begun to take over from private insurance as the way to finance medical and hospital care in Australia. He wanted to groom me as future medical politician, a societal role for which I had no taste at all; but through him I met and interacted with senior medical politicians throughout Australia. I respected and liked almost all of these men - they were all men, not a woman among them in those days - and they liked me. Several gave me good advice as I was making the transition from private practice to salaried academic life and work. At that vitally important decision node in my professional life and in our family's life (Wendy and I had two toddler children by then, Rebecca 3, almost 4, and David 15 months younger) I had helpful suggestions also from Norrie Robson, recently appointed professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide.
In my time there, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney was not a stimulating academic centre; it was intellectually moribund. For the greater part I set my own goals, wrote my own study programs and got a great deal out of my time there. By aggressively challenging two or three senior staff members I managed to get more out of my interactions with them than anyone ever previously had managed to do. I also made intellectually valuable contacts elsewhere in Sydney, notably with David Madison, professor of psychiatry who mentored me as I set about learning psychiatry; Ron Winton, editor of the Medical Journal of Australia; Ian Maddocks who came closest to practising social medicine; and several of the movers and shakers in the nascent College of General Practitioners.
Towards the end of my time in general practice I read an article in the British Medical Journal on "Uses of Epidemiology" by Professor J N Morris, and then I read his small book with the same title. This article and his book which expanded his ideas changed my life. I wrote to Jerry Morris to explore the possibility of working with him in the Medical Research Council's Social Medicine Research Unit. I got a modest traveling fellowship from the Australian Postgraduate Medical Federation which covered the cost of my travel from Australia to London and paid a stipend intended for a single man for six months. I finagled this into almost 12 months - the most mind-expanding year of my life - and Jerry Morris became my first real mentor. I learnt more from him in that year than I'd learnt in all my previous educational experiences, not just about epidemiology but also about other public health sciences. During that year I met almost all the stars in the firmament of British Social Medicine and became friends with all of them. Jerry was the son of a rabbi in Gorbals, the Glasgow slum. He never lost his Glasgow working class accent, or the iconoclastic attitudes that went with it. He was a marvellous mentor and implanted in me for life his critical, sceptical, evidence-based approach to epidemiology and the other public health sciences that relate to it.
 |
| John Lee, Stuart Morrison, Jerry Morris, at the MRC Social Medicine Research Unit, December 1961. All three played important parts in shaping my career |
I had a second mentor in the Social Medicine Research Unit: John Lee, a tall, plump man with a loud laugh, whose main interests at that time were the cause or causes of an uptick in death rates from many unrelated conditions around the time of adolescence, and the biological as well as epidemiological determinants of cancer. I learnt a great deal about ways to collect and display evidence to the best advantage from John Lee.
My predecessor as a visiting fellow in the Social Medicine Research Unit had been Kerr L White, MD, a Canadian who had moved to the USA and was head of the department of epidemiology and community medicine at the University of Vermont at the time our lives first intersected. He became my next important mentor. I learnt much from him when I worked under his supervision at the University of Vermont for a year in 1964-65; and after that he intervened in my life at several critically important times with attractive career opportunities, always accompanied by wise counsel. Kerr White is exactly 10 years older than I, so he would be 96 if he still lives - as I think he must because I'd have heard if he had died. I know his father lived to a great age, so Kerr is probably following a similar genetic pathway. His most important influence on my life and career came when as president of the International Epidemiological Association he selected me to compile and edit the Dictionary of Epidemiology. Many of our peers regard Kerr White as a cold, aloof man. This was never my perception, or Wendy's. He admired Wendy's unwavering support for me, and my dedication to my family and to my career, and both Kerr and his wife Isobel showed great kindness to all my family.
Many other people have played prominent roles in shaping my career, but this is enough for now. I'll have more to say about some of those others in future posts on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment