If you’re lucky enough, you’ll live to attend the 50th anniversary of entering medical school. I did so quite recently. We’d been a small intake of just over 100 students, in keeping with the era. Around a quarter of us attended the celebration, which I guess might be typical at this distance of time. Other alumni were abroad, were affected by rail strikes, sent their apologies for various reasons, didn’t reply to the invitation, or had lost contact. Sadly, at least three members of our year have died.
The two organisers had tactfully arranged for us all to have name badges, although I found that some people were instantly recognisable from their impish or studious faces. In other cases I found it harder to fit names to faces or, in a few instances, to remember either. This probably tells you more about my memory than anything else. (Note to future organisers: name badges in larger print would lessen the embarrassment to those of us with poorer vision too.)
A surprising number of people are still working—some in the NHS but probably more doing private practice only. Those who have left medicine are involved in voluntary work or are enjoying travelling and family time.
People at the reunion seemed to spend little time reminiscing. Some mentioned how much they’d enjoyed their student years, others less so. Oddly, I didn’t hear mention of a single teacher, although possibly that happened in other conversations. The talk was far more about who we’d each stayed in touch with, children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces, elderly or departed parents, places we’d worked and patients we’d seen, and in some cases illnesses we’d survived.
Politics came up more than when we were young. We shared our laments about the state of the NHS, although our views differed on the remedies for this. One or two people expressed approval of articles I’ve written about this issue in The BMJ; others said that these were too left wing for their taste. Most were saddened (and some angry) that the Middlesex Hospital where we trained was torn down and replaced by offices and apartments, while the medical school itself merged with University College London, where the reunion took place.
I had several conversations about religion. Some contemporaries I remember as being quite observant had moved away from their faith, while others had become far more religious. Two of them (a former surgeon and a retired GP) are now lay ministers. I hadn’t expected to discuss belief in an afterlife, but one of the most animated conversations I had was about whether it was warranted to tell dying patients that they’d see their loved ones in the hereafter. My own response was to tell a Jewish joke about a rabbi who hopes that someone will notice at his funeral that he’s still breathing.
I do hope that enough of us will be around in 2028 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our graduation, to share similar weighty thoughts and still tell jokes.