Our community is made up of health care folks that do hard things, go the extra mile, work on themselves and their knowledge so that patients get better outcomes. We’re not good all the time. We make mistakes, forget stuff, get grumpy or emotional, slide into tribal behaviour. But we’re working on it. So when someone comes along and shines a light on what’s happening outside our normal frame of practice, shows us patients that can’t get care, who are needlessly dying or suffering, it makes us uncomfortable. We want to do something.

Sometimes I get asked to be the person that turns on that torch, the person that makes everyone else uncomfortable, most recently at the excellent DFTB17. I try to do this with balance, to show another context, but also not to make people feel helpless or shocked. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes not. Without fail though, at least one person always asks me afterwards a variation of ‘What can I do?’