Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A neurosurgeon best known for his bestselling memoir 'Do No Harm', which explores the challenges and humanity of brain surgery.
On the island
Eight records
Better Not Look DownFavourite
It's a great song with great lyrics that always make me laugh when I hear them. But it's the analogy. Being a neurosurgeon is rather like being on a tightrope… the really difficult bit is not looking down.
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 – III. Molto adagio
Conjures up with an enormous sense of recovery of life starting again.
I was always just fascinated by Russian society… I never thought I'd end up combining Kremlinology… with brain surgery.
How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?
I just like the words of his song, which sum that up very nicely.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956 – II. Adagio
Amadeus Quartet (with Robert Cohen)
it brings back to me how being madly in love is wonderful… And I mean I look back at it and go, How could I be so stupid?
Roman is a man of an extraordinary large number of parts… this in fact is a recording of Scarlatti played by Food Song [Fu Cong], which Roman himself recorded.
Erbarme Dich, mein Gott (from St Matthew Passion, BWV 244)
Andrea Scholl, Collegium Vocale (cond. Philippe Herreweghe)
I've always liked the words of the Athanasian Creed… we've done those things we ought not to have done… for me, that music sums it up.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:33To be a patient, we usually have to imbue surgeons with a sort of superhuman quality. Do you understand the necessity of that?
Yes, I think so. I don't know what sort of doctor I'd have been if my son hadn't had a brain tumour when he was only three months old. But I was at the receiving end right at the beginning of my surgical career when I was training as a general surgeon. And I think that gave me a lot of insight, which other doctors often don't get until they're much older, as to what it's like to be at the receiving end, which is, of course, one is frightened, one is terrified, and particularly if you're faced by major surgery.
Presenter asks
2:49Why did you feel the need to write about the operations that went wrong in your memoir Do No Harm?
We learn most from our mistakes. And a great problem in medicine is, particularly in a dangerous specialty like neurosurgery, the consequences of our mistakes are so terrible for our patients it's very difficult to admit to them, let alone to oneself. So I suppose, although I don't think I was consciously aware of it at the time when I was writing the book, I was trying to set an example as a senior surgeon about being more open and more honest.
Presenter asks
6:12Can you describe to me the view down the microscope?
The keepsakes
The book
I have many regrets. One of my biggest regrets in life is I don't really have a second language... I'd love to be able to communicate directly with my many Ukrainian friends.
The luxury
Well, I was rather hoping an enormously large tool chest will have been swept up in a shipwreck, which I assume has deposited me on the desert island.
Most of us will have looked through a very good pair of binoculars, where the world looks somehow more real when magnified than with normal vision. And that description is the upside. It's the addictive element of operating. It's the combination of excitement and anxiety. I mean, we know it's very hard to say where excitement becomes fear. And what makes surgery exciting is well, it's exciting. You become a surgeon because it's exciting. But what makes it exciting is your anxiety the patient should do well. … So there's a strong element of self-preservation in treating patients in a slightly cold and detached way to enable you to do the work. If you're very nice and friendly and charming with patients, and then if you do dangerous surgeries such as brain surgery, you're going to feel all the worse afterwards.
Presenter asks
10:22Tell me more about your parents and how you are their creation.
My mother was German. She was a political refugee from Nazi Germany. In effect, my father had gone to Germany to learn German in 1936. He was a great internationalist. … And my father, in effect, I think, was more or less the first person whom she could openly talk to about her unhappiness, about what was going on in Germany. … And my mother was immensely musical. And I remember when I was about seven or eight, my mother gave me some of those EP extended play little discs. And one was the Red Army Choir.
Presenter asks
14:11When do you think this impulse to volunteer and save began to originate in you? How young were you?
I hate the word charity. I don't even like the word volunteering. … I do because it's so interesting. I mean, it yes, it's good to help. And one of the reasons I became a doctor is I have what I regard as an almost pathological need to feel useful, which is why I find being semi-retired quite difficult at times. But all I know is it's a great privilege to be a doctor, because just by virtue of doing your work, you are helping people.
“Being a neurosurgeon is rather like being on a tightrope. … The really difficult bit is not looking down. … But you have to keep your nerve despite those anxieties and yet at the same time remain human.”
“Most of us will have looked through a very good pair of binoculars, where the world looks somehow more real when magnified than with normal vision. And that description is the upside. It's the addictive element of operating. It's the combination of excitement and anxiety.”
“And it was a complete nightmare, because I told the doctors, look, you know, isn't something wrong? He said, no, everything's all right. … I remember going on this sort of crazy sort of nightmarish running around the hospital trying to find this mythical consultant to say, well, no, help, help.”
“I mean I look back at it and go, How could I be so stupid? you know? And yet it's so wonderful, and everything feels unified and whole and beautiful, and one becomes madly optimistic.”
“And that is peculiar, I think, not just to me, but the way medicine was like forty years ago. I think that is a lot better now. One does try, I try within my department... to create an atmosphere where there's no shame in saying I don't know what to do. There's no shame in saying I need help.”