Profile: dr simon sinclair.

Julia Bland

doi:10.1192/pb.bp.114.049809

Abstract

Simon Sinclair’s dark beady eyes confront the onlooker like a spiky intelligent bird, looking for a worm to pounce on. Useful in the context of a participant-observer study of medical acculturation which he published as Making Doctors (1997). This laser beam of anthropological analysis was

Highlights

Julia Bland talked to Northern Star, Dr Simon Sinclair, polymath, bombast, psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, at his home near Durham in the weeks before he died, about his life, views and injunctions for the profession
Useful in the context of a participant-observer study of medical acculturation which he published as Making Doctors (1997). This laser beam of anthropological analysis was recently cited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ President Simon Wessely as the book all doctors should read. Sinclair has turned his attention to a crucial question for psychiatry: Why is the profession so unattractive to junior doctors? He answers this with an extension of his analysis of the kinds of knowledge and preoccupations that are silently absorbed in medical training, which he calls ‘dispositions’, attitudes which, while unspoken, determine the behaviour of medical students and the developing prejudice against psychiatry over the course of medical training
Sinclair points out how psychiatry lacks concrete evidence of pathology and that much treatment is ‘only talking’ and responsibility is shared among a multidisciplinary group

Summary

Introduction

Julia Bland talked to Northern Star, Dr Simon Sinclair, polymath, bombast, psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, at his home near Durham in the weeks before he died, about his life, views and injunctions for the profession. Ideas and experiences of medical students at different stages of training and house jobs.

Results

Conclusion