Dr Robin Youngson interviewed by Psychiatrist Dr Nicholas Beecroft. Robin is an anesthesiologist trained in the UK and practicing in New Zealand for the last twenty years. Robin is an inspiring visionary and catalyst for truly compassionate, holistic, mindful and healing healthcare. Through opening himself and his own personal journey to others, he touches the heart of patients, healthcare professionals and hospital managers. As founder of Hearts in Healthcare and author of “TIME TO CARE-How to love your patients and your job,” he is a powerful advocate for the transformation of healthcare.
In this interview, he draws on his frustrating experience of trying to get proper care for his daughter who had been seriously injured and admitted to his own hospital for 100 days. Within a few hours he went from being a senior doctor, a powerful person in that hospital system, to a disempowered advocate for good care. He describes his own journey from doctor as technician to doctor as a mindful, healer and compassionate human being.
Robin shares some of the evidence for holistic, compassionate healthcare and gives examples of where this is already happening. He discusses how he benefitted from taking a mindful approach to his own thoughts, feelings and behaviors and how that radically transformed the healthcare experience for his patients, colleagues and himself. He talks about burnout and cynicism in medical staff. He shares his challenges in trying to reform the healthcare system.
He has realized after 15 years of trying that there is no point in trying to persuade people or systems to practice compassionate healthcare. Instead, he has founded a global network of early adopters, passionate advocates and practitioners of caring, healing, holistic healthcare called Hearts in Healthcare. The network enables the sharing of powerful inspiring stories, of good evidence, of techniques that work and experience in transformational change.
Robin is married with three grown-up children and two grandchildren. An unassuming overachiever, Robin Youngson was born in the UK in 1955. Starting life as an Army child, he followed his family to postings throughout the British Empire before experiencing the horrors of institutional life in an English boarding school. In 1977 he graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in engineering, and worked for three years in the highly hazardous field of oil exploration to pay his way through medical school.
Robin has combined clinical practice with many leadership roles in healthcare. He was a founding member of the national Quality Improvement Committee in New Zealand and also advised the World Health Organization on strategies for patient safety and putting people at the center of healthcare. As a practicing anesthesiologist, Robin has for years been a lone voice on the international speaking circuit for compassionate, whole patient care.
He is the founder of the international HEARTS in HEALTHCARE movement launched in 2012.
The Future of Western Civilization Series 1Dr Nicholas Beecroft, a Military and Organizational Psychiatrist, has spent 25 years exploring the worlds of Medicine, Psychiatry, Business, International Relations and the Military. In the Future of Western Civilization Series, he interviews visionary leaders to discover their inspiring, positive and practical visions for the future and challenges them with incisive questions.