Postgrad Med J (I 991) 67, 399
400
Trd7 The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, 1991
Conversation Piece - The Medical Journalist Dr Ken Hambly is a general practitioner who has written several books including Overcoming Tension, How to Improve your Confidence and The Nervous Person's Companion. He also contributes regularly to both the lay and medical press.
(Contact Mrs Jill Byrne, 102a High Street, Henley in Arden, UK). PDW: Do you think that general practitioners ought to alter their 'style' to deal with problems such as are addressed by your books? Do you think that books are a suitable therapeutic treatment for some members of the DR P.D. WELSBY: What factors made you decide upon population? an extra career in medical journalism? KH: I write self-help books and I know that many people DR K. HAMBLY: I have always enjoyed writing. I con- are helped by them. Some carry them round in their tributed to my school magazine and just carried on handbags like a talisman, which is the journalistic equivathrough University right up to the present. It is the craft of lent of being addicted to valium. There are GPs who are writing I find interesting, which is fortunate because the not good at treating the sort of psychological problems I financial rewards are negligible and the disappointments address, and there are many more who haven't got the frequent. It probably sounds pretentious, but writing is a time. I wrote my first book as a 'hand-out' because I compulsion for many people, including myself. didn't have the time to spend with patients, so yes, I do PDW: What training did you have before reaching this think there is a place for books as a therapeutic tool. decision and how did it prepare you for your new role? Doctors should write books about areas where they have KH: I don't think that there is any formal training expertise and so win back the ground from the alternative available for the aspiring medical journalist. I learnt practitioners who have no inhibitions about going into about popular writing from Stewart Brown, who was print, often with the most amazing rubbish. The trouble is editor of the women's magazine My Weekly when I wrote that many doctors sound patronizing in print and are for it. I began by being rather contemptuous of the quite unable to get down to the level of the reader. An magazine, which isn't exactly top of the market, but apprenticeship on My Weekly gets you over that. Stewart patiently taught me that writing for the general PDW: Do you think that the medical school curriculum public is a craft. If my pieces weren't up to the mark he ought to be expanded so that future doctors are more rejected them out of hand, so I quickly learned that the aware of their more 'socially orientated' role? Doctors, writing had to be precise and in the house style. It also had with the notable exception of geriatricians, certainly seem to be the right length and it had to have a beginning, a to concern themselves with the organic aspects of illness. middle and an end, details I had previously ignored. My KH: What a dreadful thing to say to a GP! Whether we Weekly had a huge circulation and was a big earner, and like it or not, we are obliged to deal with all sorts of writing for it was a serious business. Editors, both of problems, social and otherwise. Who else can be called at magazines and of books, know what they want from a night to deal with a blocked toilet? I think that all hospital writer and don't accept second best. You have to learn to doctors should do a few months in general practice if only give them what they want. You learn about writing by to see the patients GPs keep out of hospital. That's a serious suggestion. After all, trainee GPs are obliged to do doing it. PDW: What advice would you give to a newly qualified a lot of postgraduate hospital medicine. Perhaps the doctor who wished to pursue a career in medical jour- undergraduate course should be shortened so that more nalism? time can be spent after graduation learning from patients. KH: Don't give up your day job! But seriously, it would PDW: I did mean hospital doctors (it's still a dreadful be very difficult to obtain an income from journalism thing to say!) How does a writer of popular medical books equivalent to that of a doctor. Journalism does make an know that he is providing what the customer needs, rather excellent medical hobby but it is full of disappointments, than what he wants. so ifyou are to succeed you have to be very single-minded. KH: A writer of anything can write only about what he You have to be prepared to hustle a bit. Expect no favours knows and understands. It would be disastrous for him to from editors. try to cobble up something he thinks might be saleable. A PDW: What sort of career openings are there within book of any sort is successful only if it is honest and if it medical journalism? How does one enter such a career? strikes a chord with the reader. KH: Most medical journalists are not medically PDW: Do you think that the current epidemic of qualified, so the opportunities for doctors are limited. television doctors and counsellors will make your pubOne occasionally sees advertisements for journalistically lications of greater or less relevance? inclined doctors in the ethical medical press, but they will KH: I think broadcasting and the written word are quite be for subediting jobs, where one rewrites the work of different. I think I write reasonably well but I am a terrible others. Getting started as a freelance writer is a real broadcaster. In a book you are talking one-to-one with 'Catch 22' situation. If you have written articles and the reader in a very personal and private way. The books and so have a portfolio, it is possible to get broadcaster talks much more generally, but he might commissions. Without experience it is very difficult to get stimulate interest in a subject and persuade a listener or started. You just have to keep trying. It might be worth viewer to seek further help, and that might be from the joining the General Practitioners' Writers' Association, written word. which has hundreds of members from all over the world. PDW: How does one get into broadcasting?
400
CONVERSATION PIECE
KH: One thing leads to another. Writing articles leads to commissions for books, and if you write books your publisher's publicity team encourages you to broadcast by arranging interviews. If you are good at it there seems to be no shortage of opportunities. I was contacted by, among others, the producer of a live networked chat show and asked to be the resident expert. She was amazed when I declined on the grounds that I didn't have the nerve. How could the author ofbooks on tension be unwilling to
do live television? Well, I suppose he who can does, and he who can't . .. writes about it. PDW: How do you see your future in journalism? KH: Every writer wants ultimately to write fiction. We are all frustrated novelists, we all have novels languishing in drawers waiting for the right publisher. Writing is a compulsion, but it is ultimately unsatisfying. When my first book was published it was an anti-climax, rather like passing one's finals. The next book will be the big one.
400
Trd7 The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, 1991
Conversation Piece - The Medical Journalist Dr Ken Hambly is a general practitioner who has written several books including Overcoming Tension, How to Improve your Confidence and The Nervous Person's Companion. He also contributes regularly to both the lay and medical press.
(Contact Mrs Jill Byrne, 102a High Street, Henley in Arden, UK). PDW: Do you think that general practitioners ought to alter their 'style' to deal with problems such as are addressed by your books? Do you think that books are a suitable therapeutic treatment for some members of the DR P.D. WELSBY: What factors made you decide upon population? an extra career in medical journalism? KH: I write self-help books and I know that many people DR K. HAMBLY: I have always enjoyed writing. I con- are helped by them. Some carry them round in their tributed to my school magazine and just carried on handbags like a talisman, which is the journalistic equivathrough University right up to the present. It is the craft of lent of being addicted to valium. There are GPs who are writing I find interesting, which is fortunate because the not good at treating the sort of psychological problems I financial rewards are negligible and the disappointments address, and there are many more who haven't got the frequent. It probably sounds pretentious, but writing is a time. I wrote my first book as a 'hand-out' because I compulsion for many people, including myself. didn't have the time to spend with patients, so yes, I do PDW: What training did you have before reaching this think there is a place for books as a therapeutic tool. decision and how did it prepare you for your new role? Doctors should write books about areas where they have KH: I don't think that there is any formal training expertise and so win back the ground from the alternative available for the aspiring medical journalist. I learnt practitioners who have no inhibitions about going into about popular writing from Stewart Brown, who was print, often with the most amazing rubbish. The trouble is editor of the women's magazine My Weekly when I wrote that many doctors sound patronizing in print and are for it. I began by being rather contemptuous of the quite unable to get down to the level of the reader. An magazine, which isn't exactly top of the market, but apprenticeship on My Weekly gets you over that. Stewart patiently taught me that writing for the general PDW: Do you think that the medical school curriculum public is a craft. If my pieces weren't up to the mark he ought to be expanded so that future doctors are more rejected them out of hand, so I quickly learned that the aware of their more 'socially orientated' role? Doctors, writing had to be precise and in the house style. It also had with the notable exception of geriatricians, certainly seem to be the right length and it had to have a beginning, a to concern themselves with the organic aspects of illness. middle and an end, details I had previously ignored. My KH: What a dreadful thing to say to a GP! Whether we Weekly had a huge circulation and was a big earner, and like it or not, we are obliged to deal with all sorts of writing for it was a serious business. Editors, both of problems, social and otherwise. Who else can be called at magazines and of books, know what they want from a night to deal with a blocked toilet? I think that all hospital writer and don't accept second best. You have to learn to doctors should do a few months in general practice if only give them what they want. You learn about writing by to see the patients GPs keep out of hospital. That's a serious suggestion. After all, trainee GPs are obliged to do doing it. PDW: What advice would you give to a newly qualified a lot of postgraduate hospital medicine. Perhaps the doctor who wished to pursue a career in medical jour- undergraduate course should be shortened so that more nalism? time can be spent after graduation learning from patients. KH: Don't give up your day job! But seriously, it would PDW: I did mean hospital doctors (it's still a dreadful be very difficult to obtain an income from journalism thing to say!) How does a writer of popular medical books equivalent to that of a doctor. Journalism does make an know that he is providing what the customer needs, rather excellent medical hobby but it is full of disappointments, than what he wants. so ifyou are to succeed you have to be very single-minded. KH: A writer of anything can write only about what he You have to be prepared to hustle a bit. Expect no favours knows and understands. It would be disastrous for him to from editors. try to cobble up something he thinks might be saleable. A PDW: What sort of career openings are there within book of any sort is successful only if it is honest and if it medical journalism? How does one enter such a career? strikes a chord with the reader. KH: Most medical journalists are not medically PDW: Do you think that the current epidemic of qualified, so the opportunities for doctors are limited. television doctors and counsellors will make your pubOne occasionally sees advertisements for journalistically lications of greater or less relevance? inclined doctors in the ethical medical press, but they will KH: I think broadcasting and the written word are quite be for subediting jobs, where one rewrites the work of different. I think I write reasonably well but I am a terrible others. Getting started as a freelance writer is a real broadcaster. In a book you are talking one-to-one with 'Catch 22' situation. If you have written articles and the reader in a very personal and private way. The books and so have a portfolio, it is possible to get broadcaster talks much more generally, but he might commissions. Without experience it is very difficult to get stimulate interest in a subject and persuade a listener or started. You just have to keep trying. It might be worth viewer to seek further help, and that might be from the joining the General Practitioners' Writers' Association, written word. which has hundreds of members from all over the world. PDW: How does one get into broadcasting?
400
CONVERSATION PIECE
KH: One thing leads to another. Writing articles leads to commissions for books, and if you write books your publisher's publicity team encourages you to broadcast by arranging interviews. If you are good at it there seems to be no shortage of opportunities. I was contacted by, among others, the producer of a live networked chat show and asked to be the resident expert. She was amazed when I declined on the grounds that I didn't have the nerve. How could the author ofbooks on tension be unwilling to
do live television? Well, I suppose he who can does, and he who can't . .. writes about it. PDW: How do you see your future in journalism? KH: Every writer wants ultimately to write fiction. We are all frustrated novelists, we all have novels languishing in drawers waiting for the right publisher. Writing is a compulsion, but it is ultimately unsatisfying. When my first book was published it was an anti-climax, rather like passing one's finals. The next book will be the big one.
