{"id":500809,"date":"2026-02-26T12:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/500809\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T12:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:49:14","slug":"montreal-doctor-reveals-that-his-vulnerabilities-were-unexpected-gifts-to-whole-person-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/500809\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal doctor reveals that his vulnerabilities were unexpected gifts to whole-person care"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a memoir published as he retires from a long and distinguished career caring for patients, mentoring medical students and shaping the field of whole-person care, Montreal physician and scholar Tom Hutchinson shares deeply personal details from his own experience: wounding treatment he received from his mother as a child in Ireland; feelings of inadequacy that plagued him at times during his medical training and, later, the distressing experience of burnout; his father\u2019s drinking problems and Hutchinson\u2019s own experiences with Al-Anon.<\/p>\n

Why share so fully?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was me revealing how my vulnerabilities were unexpected gifts for my practice of whole-person care,\u201d Hutchinson said in a recent interview. \u201cI wanted to make it obvious that doctors have all these struggles that everyone else has.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt fits with the message we give medical students, that your own experiences in your family, particularly difficult experiences \u2014 including with illness and death \u2014 will be your greatest treasures in learning to relate compassionately to your patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

He acknowledges that not everyone will benefit from facing their own death. \u201cBut everyone is open to being treated with kindness and respect as a valuable and vulnerable human being,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when doctors are fully aware of the vulnerable and mortal nature of each patient, this is what follows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hutchison, 78, wrote The Craft of Medicine during a recent sabbatical in his native Ireland. It grew from a wish to reflect on his own path and to explore a more personal kind of writing, he said. Writing in the third person \u201cgave me a little distance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He trained and practised for years as a nephrologist, a kidney specialist. For all that was good about it, he realized at a certain point that he was unhappy in his work. He undertook activities ranging from home brewing to running a marathon to doing a course in family therapy but, underlying it all \u201cthere was a deep distress because he did not know where he was or what his life was really about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had volunteered for a month on the palliative care unit and spent lunchtimes with Dr. Balfour Mount<\/a>, the director of the unit, \u201cdiscussing medicine, life, palliative care and anything else that came up.\u201d Mount, who died last year, had set up North America\u2019s first comprehensive palliative care unit in Montreal and was deeply influential in the establishment of palliative care in Canada and beyond.<\/p>\n

Hutchinson moved from nephrology to palliative care in 2002 \u2014 and found a new sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gave his all to individual patients and their families,\u201d he writes. \u201cSomething about this process brought him down to Earth and connected him in a powerful way to the world around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also joined Mount in developing the McGill Programs in Whole Person Care,<\/a>\u00a0instituted in 1999 on Mount\u2019s initiative and that of Abraham Fuks, then-dean of McGill\u2019s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The programs were \u201cbased on the premise that in situations in which treatment is unable to change the disease outcome, it may be possible to create a space in which healing can occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Dr. Tom Hutchinson has published three books on whole-person care. Writing the most recent, The Craft of Medicine, in the third person \u201cgave me a little distance,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBal Mount wanted to bring the best of palliative care to the rest of medicine,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cHis vision was that \u2018we need to take this healing aspect to the rest of medicine.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that society in general, and medicine included, is scared of death and people want to avoid facing it. Part of the healing in palliative care is acknowledging that people die \u2014 and it\u2019s OK that they die,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody will die. Something about accepting that has both a calming and an energizing effect. We need to face that \u2014 to bring more of ourselves to medicine and to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

For medical students and for doctors, their experience with death is \u201ca treasure you need to bring to medicine. You need not to push it away,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cWhat we find when we teach students is that when we acknowledge it, others acknowledge it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with this approach to humanistic medicine in medical schools is that it is often taught as an elective rather than an integral part of the curriculum, said Hutchinson, who has published three books on whole-person care. At McGill, the subject of healing in medicine has been taught since 2005 to all medical school undergraduates throughout their four-year program.<\/p>\n

Initially, \u201cstudents don\u2019t see it as what medicine is about, but after taking the course, almost all say it is the best course in the curriculum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With patients often dissatisfied with care they receive and burnout among physicians in Canada alarmingly high, with roughly 46 per cent of Canadian doctors reporting high levels of burnout in 2025, Hutchinson says his book is a plea for whole-person care.<\/p>\n

During his tenure as director of McGill\u2019s programs in whole-person care, from 2004 to 2024, activities included a congress every two years, seminar series, film series and the publication of books. \u201cA lot of that depended on having a coordinator who was fully employed. That is now gone,\u201d he said. Were McGill to devote more resources to whole-person care, \u201cit would make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

A McGill spokesperson said this week: \u201cWhile whole-person care has never been an official program at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, it remains a diverse set of ongoing research and other scholarly activities aimed at promoting holistic health and well-being. The majority of funding for these activities is sourced externally. The faculty, with humanism as one of its core values, also continues to incorporate a healer content expert role in the undergraduate medical curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

One reason Hutchison wrote The Craft of Medicine, published in December, the month he retired, is to highlight that \u201cwe need to stand for a humanistic kind of medicine that won\u2019t be crushed by the machine-like system that we have, which comes from the top, which is focused on numbers and efficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the system is overly focused on measurement and outcome, there is not enough space for the human interaction that needs to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medicine, Hutchinson said, \u201chas become too bureaucratic, too top down: Doctors need to say \u2018No\u2019 to more of that. Doctors need to take more power to say how the system should be and what they need to do their work \u2026 to say, \u2018Here is what we need to practise the craft of our profession.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill 2, passed in October, would have imposed strict, government-defined performance targets on compensation and tied pay to performance, mandated high patient volumes and threatened heavy fines for non-compliance. It enraged doctors;<\/a>\u00a0following intense backlash, the government delayed its implementation to the end of February and agreed in principle to remove some of the most contested penalties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For all its faults, \u201cthe system we have is amazing,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cWe have to find a way for people to have the time and space to practise the way they want to.<\/p>\n

\u201cA crucial aspect of what it means to be a doctor is our human relationship with ourselves and with those for whom we care.\u201d<\/p>\n

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