Caroline Engen Editor

Edvin Schei

I was, long ago, a critical medical student who hoped in vain that medicine would teach me about people and make me wiser. Slowly, learning from my patients, I found my way as a family doctor, a teacher of medical students, a researcher in medical education, and an advocate of human connection in medicine. I have been a visiting scholar at Boston University, McGill University in Montreal, and Maastricht University. I have learned that medicine, and patients, profit from philosophy, friendliness, humour and honesty.

Iona Heath

I worked as a general practitioner in a deprived inner-city area of London for almost 35 years. It was an amazing place to work and I learnt almost everything I know from the courage and endurance of my patients and from colleagues from across the world but perhaps especially from Scandinavia. I discovered that the work of general practice has such an astonishing breath that reading almost any book, fiction or non-fiction, has something to teach us about the human condition that is relevant to our work. Reading taught me to write and writing has helped me to think.

Peter Dorward

I am a family physician, and medical teacher, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I have a long interest in the intersections of medicine, philosophy and literature, and talk and write extensively on this subject. I am the author of ‘The Human Kind, A Doctor’s Stories from the Heart of Medicine” (Bloomsbury 2018)

Caroline Engen

I trained as a cancer researcher before turning to psychiatry and a scholarly path in the philosophy of medicine. This path continues to shape both my clinical work and academic inquiry, and has taught me to see suffering not only as something to be known and treated, but as something that reveals. My work largely focuses on epistemological and ethical dimensions of contemporary medicine.