We can look at it in several ways.
Like breaking news, or as an unimaginable gift. As something that pushes us out of our comfort zone and messes up what we believed to be safe.
Often appearing as something inevitable, it suddenly imposes itself, like an elephant in a china shop. Or a wave that changes everything and turns us upside down.
Other times it arrives, persistent, and makes itself announced, but some ears ignore it.
The personal development gurus say that the Gabriela Clove and Cinnamon syndrome does not work with regard to change. The vicious belief “I was born like this, I am always like this, this is how I am” is an argument change does not accept as justification.
One of the most effective exercises I've been given to date is moving my workplace several times in the same day. It bothered me because it forced me to carry everything, to leave the same place, but that was the only way I could see others from different angles. Interesting, isn't it?
Change. Because we want to do it. Because something settles into our lives without warning, of its own will, forcing everything to change. But we change because we fight for it, because a new project moves us.
How long has it been since you have changed something?
For how long have you stayed in exactly the same place?
And what happens when a pandemic pushes the whole world home and another part into hospital beds?
Not only change is needed, but it is largely responsible for the transformation that then takes place.
Transformative Change is this month's central topic, and we talk about the New Reform of Clinical Education that will start in the next academic year. We talked with José Ferro, the coordinator of the team involved in the Reform plan and with João Eurico, one of the key persons for its implementation. We also go through the History of changes in the Teaching of Medicine, in order to understand them according to the demands of each time.
Time, which imposes itself in life and marks its paths, forced deadlines for change. About to turn 70, António Gonçalves Ferreira, Full Professor of Anatomy, Neurosurgeon and Director of the University Clinic of Neurosurgery at FMUL, welcomed us for a conversation without a defined topic. The result was curious, a conversation without too many plans.
But whereas there are actions that allow us not to plan with rigour, others will only be successful if carefully thought of. João Martins knows it well. The AEFML new President talked about continuity and change, facing a good ally and predecessor who now leaves his post, António Velha.
Do you tend to have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Are you open to change, or are you more closed to it? It is not easy to have the answer, but we can talk about the topic, with another excellent work of reflection by the Student Support Office.
June ends with another summary of the main agenda of our news and those of the world. Where one of great events was another debate on Palliative Care organized by Professors Rui Tato Marinho and Paulo Pina. This time the conversation was with doctor Álvaro Beleza.
The popular saying states that “God helps those who change”, but Daniel Sampaio prefers to see God just as an ally he passes by and greets, for now from a distance. While he was hospitalized in Santa Maria, he underwent one of his major changes, whereby the caregiver became the patient receiving care. The other change was which side death was on for him. A retired professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, psychiatrist and writer, he gave us the taste of an up-close conversation, where a look describes almost everything.
It may not always be easy, it almost always brings with it something better, it causes entropy, but then it becomes transformative.
Change is inevitable. So accept it.
Joana Sousa
Editorial Team
news@medicina.ulisboa.pt