Learning from Sir William Osler about the Teaching of Palliative Care

Abstract

The publication by Michael Bliss of his authoritative and illuminating text William Osler: a Life in Medicine (1) provides a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the life of a great man who had a major influence on medical undergraduate teaching and medical practice. His approach to the care of both patients and colleagues was warm and encouraging. He demonstrated a humanistic approach to medicine that was reflected in his clinical practice, his teaching, and his writings, and that remains influential today. He had the ability to blend wide knowledge with high ideals and common sense to influence the ways in which the doctor-patient relationship developed. Drawing on passages from the biography of William Osler, and linking his practice with the work of Donald Schön and the development of reflective practice, this paper identifies elements of our roles as clinicians and teachers that could be enhanced by further examination of the life of a man who has been described as the “greatest doctor in the world” (1, p.480); a physician “whose work lies on the confines of the shadowland” (1, p.291).