This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Confessions of a quo vadis surgeon: There are still many benefits of travel
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Let me start with something which has nothing to do with science at all. Friday, April 13 — if something bad is about to happen, it should happen on Friday the 13th.
And, unfortunately, it did.
|
I was on my way home to Belgium from Thessaloniki, Greece, where I had been invited to attend an excellent orthopaedic meeting: the 26th Congress of the Orthopaedic and Traumatology Association of Macedonia and Thrace.
I had risen early to catch my plane. We were flying over the snow-capped Alps when the captain informed us that Brussels Airport was closed because of a strike. As a result, we were diverted to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
Consequently, I missed some late Friday afternoon surgery appointments, which had to be shifted to an already tight schedule the following week.
So, despite my favorable experience in Greece, I had to pay a price in terms of rescheduled cases and missed work once I returned home.
Quo vadis (ie, “Whither thou goest?”) indeed. But perhaps the bigger question is: Why do I go in the first place?
The challenges of travel
|
I must admit that I travel a lot, but it is still less than some surgeons I know. And I do this because it allows me to share experiences with colleagues in teaching and ex cathedra.
My former boss and mentor, to whom I am deeply indebted, stopped traveling after an engine of a plane he was flying on caught fire. I never asked him whether this happened on a Friday the 13th!
I realized later on that one cannot be strong at home and abroad at the same time. That is the compromise of business travel.
Still, traveling not only enriches the scope of our profession and the arena in which we work, but it is also a way to get connected across countries and continents.
It paves the way for the younger generation and gives them the opportunity to meet, confer and confront ideas otherwise limited to the locale where they live. As the saying goes, “No man is a prophet in his own country.”
Take the good with the bad
Then again, traveling is sometimes a challenging experience. Some even say it is a burden on ecology, but for sure it is also a burden on oneself, because the work at home does not disappear while you are not there. Rather, it kind of hits you in the face when you come back home.
Despite these setbacks, we should keep on traveling for science and for sharing our experiences. Let the orthopaedic community know what you do, and travel to enhance your individual relationships.
Person-to-person contact still works well. Even marketers agree on this.
Quo vadis. I know.
But try to avoid doing it on Friday the 13th.
For more information:
- René Verdonk, MD, PhD, is an editor of Orthopaedics Today International. He can be reached at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Gent University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, B-9000 Gent, Belgium; +32-9-240-2227; e-mail: rene.verdonk@UGent.be.