Dahl and I chatted every few nights, whenever I was on call, and I found I liked him more and more. He was one of many patients to whom I have become close over the years. I used to keep notes of what I learned along the way in a green notebook, important things patients taught me about medicine and about life. In five or six packed years as a medical student, you discover so much about what is important. By seeing people at their most difficult times, their most vulnerable, you understand how some cope, and even grow, whilst others really struggle and wither.

I still have my green notebook from all those years ago. ‘GP Roger X,’ it begins. ‘Shouts at old people or anyone Asian etc. and thus distances them.’ There follow two pages of my critical observations of this hapless general practitioner, who I, a twenty-one-year-old medical student, clearly felt was getting it all wrong. ‘He ought to read the notes of their last visit before they come in, so he knows what it may be about … Best to talk to them before starting to write anything down; not make notes as they talk – it's RUDE.’

Like generations of medical students before me and since, I must have sat there wincing with embarrassment at what seemed like the clumsy behaviour of an ignorant doctor. Do my own students similarly sit in silent horror and observe my cumbersome performances today? Probably. I catch myself occasionally shouting at an old person, and then will ask apologetically, ‘Are you actually hard of hearing? No? Then there's no need for me to shout, is there?’

I do try to listen to patients before I start scribbling notes. Time is very pressured, but I have found if you look people dead in the eye, listen carefully to what they are saying, and try not to cut them short, it actually takes less time overall. I'm not sure why. Maybe because they know the messages are getting across first time, and they don't need to repeat things.