Always another summit to climb

So you have a history of setting goals for yourself. Surgeon Mr Dev Lall believes it’s important to maintain that momentum throughout your career to maintain job and personal satisfaction.

The temptation during our training is to view the consultant post as the ultimate prize: the end goal.

While that is entirely understandable, it is only after you have been in post for several years that you realise the consultant job is merely a waypoint: a stepping stone to something else.

The trouble, in in my experience, is that many people have no idea what that ‘something else’ could be.

One next step is private practice, of course, but a few years down the line, one can find oneself dissatisfied. Is there nothing more to do except work until retirement?