Second Opinion:Of all the medical publications, and there are quite a few, perhaps the best known is the British Medical Journal.
It is published weekly and consists of original research, editorials, clinical teaching, job advertisements and other vital information.
The best bit is situated in the back pages, and you have a virtuous feeling by the time you have ploughed through the whole periodical that you can sit back to enjoy the obituaries.
There is an added frisson of excitement if you knew the deceased. Your usual thought is "I didn't know that he was still alive", followed by the immediate realisation that, well, he isn't.
But you really don't have to know the doctors whose black and white pictures stare back solemnly at you. For these are the essential details of a medical life - the final stamp on the file before it is put away.
Most people get only one obituary, but you get an extra mention if you marry another doctor, in their obituary. You actually get several mentions if you marry multiple doctors, but it is as well not to do so simultaneously.
A typical obituary reads something like this: "It is with great sorrow we hear of the death of Dr X. He became fascinated by medicine when he got his nose stuck in a clothes peg at the age of six. He studied medicine in Bart's, Guy's and Tom's, graduating at the early age of 36 with four medals of distinction, all of them in golf. He achieved blues in smoking, drinking and playing cards. During his internship he met the love of his life, Mary Y, and consequently married Julie Z shortly afterwards.
"During the war, he served with distinction in London, Brighton and Hove Albion. After being demobbed in 1945, he entered general practice, where he worked for the remainder of his career, with stints as a part-time neurosurgeon in the local cottage hospital.
"He did not suffer fools gladly [ unless he owed them money]. Medical students came to appreciate his forthright manner, and his history of 17 assaults on them remains a record for the Home Counties. His numerous hobbies included road bowling, chubb fuddling and lilting.
"He died peacefully, surrounded by his creditors, and the medical world is diminished by the passing of one of its great characters. This journal is especially diminished, as he owed us several years' subscriptions."
They fitted a lot in, those old doctors. The last few years' obituaries have been dominated by their wartime and sporting achievements. As we embrace the American work ethic wholeheartedly, I wonder if it will be possible for today's students to live such full lives.
You can imagine the obituary of any character in Grey's Anatomy or ER, for example.
"She went to medical school and worked extremely hard. She graduated, and worked even harder. She had no social life, except for several ultimately disappointing dalliances with her colleagues."
Students beware.
Medical students are particularly at risk because they have to trade in a variety of interests for one alone. If you have the kind of mind that can achieve A grades in honours maths, Irish, music and art, it seems a pity to submerge all that talent in medicine and exclude everything else.
Your medical education should make you a well-rounded person who is able to do a job well, not an automaton that toes the party line in all things.
Unfortunately, there used to be a tendency in medical schools to turn everyone into clones, with the same accents and attitudes.
The situation is improving, but it remains important for doctors to develop their souls and discover their individual selves.
The process of learning the trade of medicine takes up a lot of time and effort, but it is important to hold on to whatever it is that makes you unique, whether it be playing the fiddle or fishing the Corrib, for the hard work will eventually get easier and inevitably stop.
An ideal obituary would declare that the doctor never lost her sense of idealism. She held on to the same wish to heal the world and do good with which she started medicine. She built on her youthful interests and accomplishments to achieve a happy and useful life.
The old rock 'n' roll expression "Live hard, die young and leave a good-looking corpse" can be adapted to the medical world as "Live well, stay young and leave a good-looking obituary."
Pat Harrold is a good-looking GP in Co Tipperary.
Maurice Neligan is on leave.
