The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (271)

How are you choosing to treat your patients?

How are you choosing to regulate?

How are you choosing to balance the concepts of ‘mixed agency’ or perverse incentives that beset us at every pathway?

I would choose to be an artist (although I’m terrible at art)

I would choose to write about stuff and to do my surgery the best I possibly could, taking the time I needed to talk to patients, to do a few cases and to photograph them as well as possible. But I’m beset by the fact that I need to pay for a practice to continue to run, for the staff to be in it so that I get the chance to come back again tomorrow.

You could choose to do it for ego (I’m sure that people will say that’s why I do it too and that would be true)

You could want to be the best, you could want to be famous, you could want to stand up on top of the pedestal and say “Look at me… it’s all about me! Fly me around the world in a fancy seat on a plane and pamper me like a rock star”

Or you could choose to do it for your pocket - so that you could collect the money to push yourself up the status ladder to be better than the person next door.

Most of the reasons you choose to do things are because of these three reasons (even altruism is based on ego because you’re able to say how good you were and how you helped someone)

Interesting though to see which of these applies the most to the way you practice. Also, interesting to see which of these applies to the way we’re regulated. I don’t think the regulator is interested in art but there is certainly an ego and pockets element to what is done.