What is the most important word in medicine? It is not what we teach doctors | Ranjana Srivastava

“What’s a Festschrift?” my youngest asks.

“In German it means ‘celebration writing’,” I say, “I’m going to an academic conference to honour a doctor.”

The notion of voluntary learning prompts an eye roll from his teenage sister: “Can’t say I relate.”

An eminent surgeon is retiring after 50 years of public service. All too often we allow such contributors to fade away without notice, so the acknowledgment arranged by one of his colleagues is noteworthy.

How to celebrate a man whose career spans half a century, hundreds of publications, seminal textbooks, an eponymous operation, military deployment, developing world aid, international renown, prolific musicality, teaching, training and mentoring? In the same way you eat an elephant: piece by piece.

Intellectual contributions are commingled with personal memories. One speaker recalls an era when everyone smoked but the surgeon stood apart. A female colleague invokes his championing of the first female surgeons in the south Pacific. Surgeons from the defence forces laud his staunch commitment to service, not only to his own country but also those plundered by war and destitution.

Every speaker has a story about finding a way through the thicket of surgical training. They all succeeded, in no small part due to his selfless ideology. More than one surgeon achieved greater heights because of a reassuring voice on the other end of the phone or operating table. The genuineness of their tribute is as plain as it is moving.

The surgical advances attributed to one man I find stunning in their scope. They bear witness to the way one person’s idea can fire another’s imagination to build discoveries that ultimately trickle down to the patient. Despite being an interloper at a surgical conference where I don’t understand everything, my spirit soars at the power of collaboration to progress patient care.

Lunch brings conversations that a normal workday simply doesn’t allow. Professional exchanges exist to solve problems as briskly as possible. Whether to operate. How to stem a bleed. What to say to a grieving family. How to fix complications.

Surgeons are sometimes seen as superheroes but, in truth, they are as vulnerable and prone to self-doubt as the rest, and I can’t help thinking that if these moments of genuine human connection are therapeutic for doctors then they must be even better for our patients.

The academic display reminds me about the anaemic perception of the public hospital system. The drumbeat of commentary encompasses stretched resources, disillusioned staff, harassment, harm and waitlists.

But these (justifiable) concerns overshadow the beating heart of the same system that – despite its constant challenges – keeps pushing the boundaries of excellence. Countless public hospital workers advance medicine one study, one project at a time. Their work is undertaken without fanfare, in their own time, fuelled by the basic desire to do better by patients.

The proof is in a new Productivity Commission report that shows healthcare productivity improved by an impressive 3% a year (compared with an improvement of just 0.8% in the whole market sector). Australian healthcare productivity ranks third among high-income nations, second only to Iceland and Spain.

The authors state “quality improvements, not cost reductions, were the big drivers of productivity growth, and the vast majority of these have come from advances in saving lives”.

The giants of medicine might dwell in ivory towers but the foot soldiers work in the public hospital system.

Finally, the retiring surgeon rises to speak. My ears perk up at his account of the Rwandan civil war, replete with a litany of gut-wrenching decisions: whom to save, whom to let die; whether it was “worth” saving a limb only to lose it to sepsis; treating a victim and their attacker side by side.

I have lost count of the conferences I have attended (and fallen asleep at). Listening to accomplished and humble people is simultaneously inspiring and intimidating, leaving one with a dull feeling of somehow having fallen behind in life.

So, when asked what advice he might give other doctors, I brace myself for another mountain I can’t climb. But, without missing a beat, he declares: “The most important word in medicine is kindness.”

Kindness. The word floats from the lectern and lands in our laps. A legendary career in medicine could be founded on so many words: grit, intellect, stamina, courage, charisma. But it is no accident that he chose kindness and no accident that the kindness has paid off.

While his other attributes might be hard to emulate, kindness I can do. Kindness we can all do. This might be his finest and most enduring legacy.