Reaching out a helping hand

I've been reading again the nice things my friends wrote in the festschrift collection. John McKinlay, who was a graduate student in Wellington, New Zealand at the time he refers to, says that I received two letters asking for my help and career advice; one was from him, the other was from Vicente Navarro, a young neurosurgeon, who wrote from Barcelona. I was at the University of Edinburgh at the time and somehow I'd acquired a reputation as the "go-to" chap for advice on education in epidemiology and community medicine. I'd been doing research for the Royal Commission on Medical Education, and something I'd said about epidemiology as the essential basic science for a wide range of careers in medicine had been picked up by the medical newspaper, Medical Post. John McKinlay got the facts slightly squint. I'd received his cry for help and Vicente Navarro's on the same day, several weeks after the Medical Post interview. Altogether I probably had more than 20 requests, inquiries, etc, about half of them phone calls from UK-based docs, the rest, letters from all over the planet. I was able to offer helpful suggestions about necessary steps to advance career aspirations for about half of them, including a few whom I steered towards our graduate programs in Edinburgh. If I'd stayed in Edinburgh, I'd have followed up this small cohort, but not long after I left for Ottawa. My life is littered with unfulfilled opportunities to assess and evaluate all sorts of 'educational' initiatives. I'm sure the same could be said about many other academic staff members.