Why I became an occupational physician ...
Email: joekear99{at}hotmail.com
In gratitude for their prompt help in a serious accident in a new sewer tunnel outside the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the medical staff were invited to see the work excavating the wide bore, using as a rough guide the layer of pebbles on what had been the bed of the Rhine 18 000 years ago. That was so interesting that registrars arranged visits to other local enterprises, including Colman's mustard factory. Our curiosity was such that at the West Norwich Hospital, during a polio epidemic, everyone in the mess took a turn inside an iron lung, the better to understand how to brief a distressed, breathless patient on what to expect when incarcerated helplessly within a controlled environment.
During my own National Service in the RAMC, I had to assess and maintain the fitness of 120 recruits arriving every fortnight as they performed a wide variety of tasks. Later, I did the same to Civil Service candidates and sickness absentees in the London postal district of W12.
At the end of a weekly session for general practitioners at the Hammersmith Hospital, a participant asked those assembled, ‘Would anybody like to look after Cadby Hall during my holidays?’ Mine was the only response. Bill Blood had been an architect of the Diploma in Industrial Health, and informally introduced me to the specialism as I cared for 8500 employees of J. Lyons and Company for 3 weeks each year. On one occasion, my boss Sir Samuel Salmon attended me with a sore foot. I asked him to lean on the examination couch while I raised the sole of his foot behind him. Cigar ablaze, he exclaimed over his shoulder ‘You're treating a knight of the Realm like a bloody horse!’.
Five years later Bill fell terminally ill. Sir Samuel would not contemplate him reading of his replacement as he lay dying, so he asked me to remain until Bill died. I was then offered the opportunity to study while my locum was paid. I could have the job if I gained the DIH. My wife and Stuart Carne, my partners in general practice, encouraged me to try. If I failed or did not like the career change, I would always be welcome back.
At SOM meetings, Bill had not been allowed to speak unless he introduced himself as ‘Blood, of Lyons!’ Mere ‘Kearns’, having burned no bridges, was incredibly lucky to be introduced to a new career, mentored by Jackie O'Dwyer of Unilever, Jimmy Grahame of Heinz, Andrew Raffle of London Transport and Roy Archibald of the National Coal Board. Lyons later encouraged me to host meetings with John Aldridge of IBM, Roger Treadgold of UCH, Harold Bridger and Alexis Brook of the Tavistock Institute and several other senior colleagues, to consider how we might help our managements to understand, assess and control the total working environment.
My apparently aimless wanderings have proved to be an exciting, fulfilling progression full circle!
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