The need to teach inspiration

I don’t know my place. I never have. This has been both a strength and a weakness. I am driven more by curiosity and an interest in talking to people and understanding how they work than in moving smoothly through the levels of social or class convention or staying within the defined limits of a medical problem. Often I find myself in the wrong place, and I make mistakes.

I came to England in the 1980s, on a tidal wave of Irish junior doctors facing unemployment and few training opportunities at home. In comparison with the …