Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Blog
  • >
  • The Thursday Post: To Helsinki and Back with Tools of the Trade
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

The Thursday Post: To Helsinki and Back with Tools of the Trade

27 April 2017

Projects

Dr John Gillies OBE FRCGP FRCPE is a medical doctor who is former chair of the Scottish Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and co-editor of the SPL’s anthology for newly graduating doctors Tools of the Trade, alongside Dr Lesley Morrison, Revd Ali Newell and Kate Hendry. Here, he discusses talking in Finland recently about his experiences of editing the anthology and using poetry in medicine.

Poetry travels well. It was a pleasure to talk about Tools of the Trade, the Scottish Poetry Library’s book of poems for new doctors in Scotland, to an invited audience of academics and non-medical practitioners from Finland, Scandinavia and USA at the University of Helsinki in April. I was asked because of work that the University of Edinburgh Compassion Initiative has been involved in through their Compassion / Co-passion project.

The theme of the two-day conference was embodying compassion, and the links between this, the workplace, and organisational life. Different sessions were led by an artist, a musician, some neuroscientists, psychologists, and, most challenging for me, an interpretive dance specialist.  Not your average medical meeting, then.

The focus of the session I led concerned the power of poetry to appeal to both head and heart, intellect and emotion, and the way in which that can open up to new doctors a different way of seeing the patient in front of them, as well as the illness that patient has. We explored the other aim of the book – to provide for the new doctors ‘a friend to carry with you and consult when you need comfort, inspiration or connection with the outside world’. I asked people to read and comment on some of the poems featured in Tools of the Trade. Diana Hendry’s ‘Poem for a Hospital Wall’ made everyone smile, and the last lines of Valerie Gillies’s ‘To my surgeon’ – ‘I am / held / by your hand / saving my life’ – were quoted and commented on in the final round-up session. The surgeon’s hand, in that poem and Michael Rosen’s ‘These are the hands’, are very practical embodiments of compassion.

I had wondered whether the poems might lose something in translation, but Finns speak and understand English very well, and the clarity of the poems shone through readily.

In one-to-one discussions afterwards, it was interesting how often people, in settings from Finland to Colorado, talked about their experiences of meeting with doctors, how varied these were and how important the human, relational aspects of the care were, whatever the clinical problem.

But how can you teach that, someone asked me?  Well, poetry has an important part to play in helping doctors make these connections. I hope to go back. Time for a Finnish edition?

If you would like to know about the current edition of Tools of the Trade, click here.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library