Editor’s letter
Nikki Stamp loves being a surgeon but found something was very wrong with her profession.
It’s a tough slog to scale to the top tiers of the surgical profession. Only the best and brightest get a crack at it and, as patients, we wouldn’t want it any other way: merely competent isn’t good enough when your health is on the line.
Nikki Stamp understood this when she embarked on life as a cardiothoracic surgeon, doing heart operations, transplants. She loved the work but soon began to question some other parts of the job before finally realising there was “something very wrong with the profession”. Fatigue, bullying, harassment…the cumulative effects weigh many young doctors down and break some of them.
Dr Stamp’s story is not an isolated one – a damning report into the toxic culture in the practice of surgery laid it all out in 2015. Action plans and targets were formulated to correct things, but it seems change has been slow.
The perfect late summer salad
If your peaches are already super sweet, don’t even bother grilling them.
A Greek salad with the lot, and then some
The surprise here is the stone fruit, which pops with sour–sweetness to elevate the lot.