Retirement

Today I retire after 30 years in rural general practice. Quite some day! I have a lot of memories and the great majority positive and rewarding. I have had a great career in the small Welsh rural community of Montgomery on the English border.

The landscape remains beautiful and enchanting but the medicine has changed and it’s becoming harder to balance the humanities with the science. What we do now is process driven and mechanistic. Its a laborious process of measuring and recording. I worry who will look after those in despair and anguish in the future and will this be left to alternative practitioners and those with little or no training.

John Berger in his iconic book on rural general practice, "A Fortunate Man" emphasises the importance of the bond between the physician, the individual and the community. He states:
“Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents take place. For those who, with the inhabitants, are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal.”

Blues and American Roots Music is about those struggles, the despair and the passion that inhabits the lives of the poor, the dispossessed and those without any other voice to express their trials and tribulations. Our journey is about that landscape and the curtain that turned the anguish of poverty into an art form that dominated the 20th Century and popular culture around the world.

Today I heard from a great friend and mentor. His name is Professor Roger Rosenblatt. Roger is one of the heroes of Rural Health in the USA. He started as a remote practitioner in Washington State in the sixties and went on to establish the Rural Health Research Centre at the University of Washington in Seattle. Coincidentally Roger and his wife Fernne are also on a road trip across the USA and I hope that we can meet up. Check out the blog "The Loneliness of the long-distance road tripper" http://rosenblattroadtripusa.blogspot.com/

Roger and Fernne Rosenblatt (The Road Trippers)

Special thanks to another great rural GP from Galicia in Spain, Jose Lopez-Abuin who has been a constant friend and colleague over the last few years. Thanks for your support!

Dr Jose Lopez-Abuin (Galician Rocker)

We leave for the US on Sunday.