I decided on my first day of Liver Surgery that I would interview Professor Morris.

It was that curious glint in his eye through the day, and a child-like excitement to parts of his work he must have seen thousands of times. I can't say that this is a common attitude in the hospital environment, and I wanted to know what drove it.

I wanted to know, because I recently decided a career in medicine (at least in its traditional form) is not for me. As I settle into that decision I have a nagging sense that there is something special here in medicine that I am missing the essence of. It's people like Prof. Morris that give me that sense.

Prof's career is legendary, and to me represents an exciting possibility of achieving both concentration and scale of impact in the medical field. He is adored by his patients and the broader academic community alike, and he clearly is having quite a bit of fun doing it. So I wanted to hear a bit more about his life.

Professor David Morris is a world-renown surgical oncologist, as well as a drug developer, researcher and has:

• Pioneered the treatment of hydatid disease with Albendazole.
• Developed 4 anti-cancer drugs.
• Pioneered multiple surgical techniques in surgical oncology.
• And much, much more.

On top of all this he is a farm-owner (new life goal unlocked), where he has over 2000 sheep!!!

Talk about an over-achiever.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this chat. I have my foot out the door of an establishment that he is a towering figure in. Would we reach an understanding?

Despite my worries I left feeling a kind of kindred spirit in Prof. He was no different in his passions, commitment and love for his work to the startup + alternative-other crowd I have come to associate with.

And I'd love to share this chat with you.

Read more for for:

• Prof's 'self-indulgent' approach to wayfinding
• How to become an expert in a field within just a few years.
• How Prof started a lab and developing a cure for hydatid cysts during registrar (early training) years
• The big mistakes being made by medical school students and young doctors today
• The 'human' aspects of medicine - What cannot be replaced

He spoke to me in his office, level three in a small building adjacent to the hospital. The shelves were filled to the brim and stacked all the way to the ceiling and a table, stacked with a similar kind of fervor sat between me and Prof.

And so the chat began.

Self-indulgence as a strategy for wayfinding

Liz: It's difficult to imagine you as a medical student. What were you like? Were you very serious?

Prof. Morris: Well, as a medical student, I was bored to tears. And the first two years in medical school, I seriously thought about giving up and going back to the farm. I found the kind of lecture-type education that we had in those days, the first two years, was just dreadfully boring. Fortunately, when I got on to the third year, which was clinical, the first day I was on a surgical term. I went to theatre, and I stayed in theatre all day - and all night - and all the next day. And I thought, "Hmm, this might do". I think that the thing to try and find in life is what you enjoy. And I really enjoy surgery. Now, psychoanalysing yourself about why you enjoy things, I'm not clever enough to do, but I certainly find fixing things is kind of pleasing. It feels good when you fix things.

Liz: So it sounds like a lot of it came from this discovery of what you enjoyed. Would you say that was the primary driving force early in your career? And is that different to your approach now?

Prof. Morris: No, I think I've gone on being very self-indulgent and doing things that I enjoy doing.

But in terms of why have I gone on doing the things that I have done and why I still enjoy it every day when I'm 73 years old and come to work and so on, is that I've changed what I've done over the years. I used to do a lot of colorectal surgery back in the UK. When I came here to Australia, I thought that there was a bit of an absence of interest in liver cancer, and I could do liver surgery, and so I concentrated on that. I think I operated on a bit over 5,000 people with liver cancer and we developed some new techniques. I find that kind of interesting. Doing stuff that's new is a buzz. You only have to get one thing right every now and again. It's a huge buzz and I've developed a few drugs over the years. It's really sort of exciting but also quite humbling that you can become an expert in an area within a few years. I still really enjoy that feeling.

Liz: I think what has been unique about your career is the way that you've constantly, proactively shifted and explored, in contrast to how treadmill-like and straightforward the medical path can be. What has led you to deviate from what could have been a very straight path, so to speak?

Prof. Morris: I think you could also think that I'm awkward and kind of self-indulgent in that I really like to work on things that I'm interested in. And I kind of justify that because often those things are not things that other people are interested in. And so it's been useful for patients, not just for me. And again, it's good to try and find things that are both useful and enjoyable. I think there'd be nothing worse than doing a job that you really don't enjoy. If you can find what you like, then life's much easier.

Beginner to expert - Developing a cure for hydatid disease

Liz: So then let's say that you've identified a new area that you're interested in and that you'd like to be an expert in it in a couple of years. How do you begin this process of learning?

Prof. Morris: For me, it's often started in the lab in that, you know, we find something that's not been noticed before, that's interesting, and I can see could be of potential value. Then you really have to understand the disease that you're going to try to use that device or drug in, because lots of scientists will develop things that actually are very clever, but don't have much clinical application. So I guess I'm very focused on what we do actually have a clinical need for.

So first of all, find a good problem. If you have a good problem, then it's worth working on that. And put simply, the things that I've worked on are: liver cancer, which had an absolutely dismal prognosis when I started and then peritoneal cancer, and now I'm interested in drug development for mucin-related disease. And that's really taken me into respiratory medicine, which is quite a change, but very interesting and very exciting. And again, we recently put some papers into the European Respiratory Society, and had five papers accepted. I thought, "That's interesting, other people seem to find our work to be interesting (Despite us not being from this field primarily). I guess that we all tend to limit ourselves.

I've been very surprised at how discoveries can occur and how you can actually do those things. I think the best thing that I did was albendosol for Hydatid disease, echinococcus. And that was when I was a registrar. That has stood the test of time and we did the basic laboratory and animal testing as well as the first clinical series. It was really quite eye-opening that I could do that and I couldn't really understand why other people hadn't.

Liz: Can you describe what the process of drug discovery was like for you?

Prof. Morris: Well, with Hydatid disease, the drug that I was interested in had rather better pharmacokinetics than any previous agents that had been used for it. It encouraged me to think that it might be useful. And because it was useful in granulosis, we went on to look at it in the laboratory and in animals in multilocularis, which was pretty much uniformly fatal before the drug came along. And it was just very exciting.

Liz: And as a registrar, in what capacity did you do this research? Had you set up your own lab?

Prof. Morris: Yeah, well there were some great people that I knew, and they were very supportive and helpful, even if they weren't experts in that area. They had enough enthusiasm and they challenged the existing dogma and in that they really taught me something.

Liz: Right. Stupid question, but how does one start a lab?

Prof. Morris: You don't need very much really. A lab is a bit of bench space and then a little bit of planning about what you're going to need and what you're going to do and so on. And then you kind of graduate to wanting to have people help you do things and then you have to raise money and you have to get grants. find money from other sources. I never actually robbed anybody to do research, but I suppose I've come pretty close to it.

Liz: What would you say is your favourite or least, and least favorite part of your job currently?

Prof. Morris: Well, the least favorite part is really easy, and that's administration. I hate administration. I know that it has to happen, and people do have to be administrators, and it's a thankless job, and I'm not prepared to do that. Really. What's the most exciting bit? Ah, the most exciting bit is helping people. And I get a real buzz out of seeing people, say from 20 years ago, when everyone thought I was totally mad for doing peritonectomy. And I've still got patients alive from 20 or even 30 years ago who have benefited from that.

The trap in medicine - What to optimise for

Liz: That easily sounds like what would be the most rewarding part. What would you say, if you look back in your career, were some mistakes that you made along the way or some things that you see young doctors doing now that you think is something that you'd advise against?

Prof. Morris: Okay, now as a drug developer and the at least partial owner of a drug company, this may sound a bit funny, but I think one of the great problems in medicine is money. And I think that one can become completely focused on money and I think that's actually not good for anybody, including you. And we all have to earn money, but it's a shame when it kind of takes over your life, because there's much more interesting things to do, and much more rewarding things to do. So I think that's a great problem in medicine, and I don't think our system provides much of an alternative to that. life is making a lot of money and so I think that's a shame and I'm not a communist but I think that it's it's a trap right and in in the drug company that I've developed It's still a trap and we have to have money in order to do development and to do trials and to do the regulatory. But the focus must always remain the patient and providing patients with a useful treatment.

Liz: Nowadays, I also see a growing trend where many, at least students around me, optimise for work-life balance - I've heard that many specialties that have been more demanding They have gone down in popularity and more lifestyle specialties so to speak have increased demand. What are your thoughts on this?

Prof. Morris: I've been thrown out of various meetings before now, including the careers night here, because my idea of work-life balance is not quite the conventional one. I love work, and I really, really enjoy it. I also think it's a pretty important thing, looking after patients. And you probably want to try and do it pretty well. And I don't think it's very hard, at least in our specialty, which you understand, to kind of half do it.

Liz: What do you think are some things that one could do to catalyse this process of discovery - To find work that you love?

Prof. Morris: Well, I think it's It's underrated. In medical school, I think that probably one of the most important things is to try and find what you want to do. And I don't think that in medical school we put much effort into that. And that's a pity. It seems to me that we don't actually prepare our students very well for their lives after they get out of medical school. And I'm afraid the only way that you kind of find these things at the moment is just by rotating around different disciplines and finding things that you enjoy. And it's sometimes that you enjoy the team, or there's a good coffee shop, or the nurses were nice on that team. And of course, that isn't enough, because that isn't what you're going to be doing when you're a boss. So you have to do a little bit of psychoanalysis about what turns you on. And what's gonna last.

I guess for me, and I don't understand people who don't get this buzz. I think the buzz in research happens every day. There are always new things happening. Not just your research, but other people's research. is kind of, it's good fun.

Liz: A lot of medical students have worries, doubts about the future of their careers, especially now at a time when knowledge work is at risk and is questioned. What is it to be a doctor in this future?

Prof. Morris: I think that AI is our servant. I think it's going to help us. I don't think it's going to actually replace many of the things that we do as doctors. It might be very helpful to us, but it doesn't worry me a bit. I think you're going to find your ability to interact with another human being and to spot who's sick. When we go around in the morning, often it's not the odd spots and tubes that tell us who's sick. You just look at them and you can see.

Being a human doctor in the age of AI.

Liz: I feel that it is an exciting time though, because discussing what can and can't be replaced makes us question what parts of the work are inherently human. What other aspects of being a doctor have you felt are fundamentally human in this way?

Prof. Morris: I think that the human elements of being a doctor are absolutely central to what we do. You've seen our peritonectomy patients and how they come in to our office not knowing much and we talk to them about their disease, tell them the options, listen to their take on that, work out if they're appropriate for the procedure, work out if they're fit for the procedure, and at the end of the day work out if they're going to consent to it. And again, I think that's a very human thing and that's because before somebody can decide, they've got to understand. And although we do give them written material about outcomes, I think that they listen to what you say. Also, they have a feeling that you as a human being are looking after them. And I don't think that that's something that's easily replaced. They trust you to look after them. And they kind of need that feeling.

Liz: And finally, do you have any book recommendations?

Prof. Morris: The House of God. So the House of God is about kind of full-on very busy clinical practice for juniors in the US and it's kind of the bad old days when people worked absolutely ridiculous hours, never set a foot outside the hospital and you know, got told by their mothers that they look pale. And I did all that. And to be honest, although there is a negative side to that, there is also a very positive side to that. And it's kind of a bit like the feeling that people get in a war, that you actually feel part of a team. Anyway, it's a good book.

Liz: I'll definitely have a read. Thanks so much for the chat.

Among other article-types I'll be posting more interviews with people with that glint, just like Prof Morris. I have a diverse list planned - of bakers, baristas, pastors, founders, mothers, gardeners, retirees… So stay tuned!

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