György Lovász, MD and Ágnes Lakner, MD met at the Medical University of Pécs, they were groupmates during the clinical years. As is often the case, love became marriage, and although they began to furnish their common life at the county seat of Baranya, they eventually found work and home in the United Kingdom. György is a chief physician, chief surgeon, and director of Orthopaedics at the Practice Plus Group Hospitals, and Ágnes is a paediatrician at a 40-bed elective surgery centre and works as a chief physician at Chesterfield Royal Hospital. They consider university to be the most beautiful years of their lives, they believe they got a lot from it, it’s no coincidence that their sons also graduated here.
Written by Rita Schweier Rita
- Did you both get admitted to university in the first place?
- Ágnes: My husband got accepted in first place, I got in for the second time. After graduating from high school, I worked at the Neurology Clinic, in the EEG lab, as an assistant. The experience there, the first close connection with healing, confirmed in me the determination that this is what I want to deal with in the future. In the evenings, I attended a university prep course, which, in addition to studying, also provided an opportunity to establish long-term friendships.
- Why did you choose Pécs?
- György: I grew up here, I went to school here, so there was no question that I would come to university here.
- Ágnes: I grew up in a small village in Vas County. I chose Pécs because my parents attended the Teacher Training College and my brother also studied here.
- What were the university years like?
- György: The medical university has always been one of the studious institutions, in order to achieve a good result, a lot of time had to be spent in front of the books. After passing the anatomy exam, I started undergraduate research work at the Anatomy Institute, which helped me gain insight into the details of scientific research. I benefited greatly from this later in my career. Student life was vibrant, the local students and the students at the dorms had a great time together in the weekend discos held in the dormitories. The sport life also remains memorable, I was a member of the university basketball team. We had a very good team spirit on the field, and we spent a lot of time together outside of it as well.
- Ágnes: The everyday life was dominated by tons of studying. I was a dormitory student all along, I enjoyed its atmosphere. Studying together, the closeness of my groupmates and a quick access to them was important to me. For the first two years, I lived in the dormitory at 48-as Tér, first in a six-bed and later in four-bed rooms, then I moved to the Jakabhegyi dormitory, where I was accommodated in a more comfortable double room.
- I presume your love was entwined at the university.
- Ágnes: Yes, we were in the same group during the clinical years. We really discovered each other in the sixth year and were already planning a common future when fate separated us. As the result of the job applications, I started working in Szombathely, in the Neurology Department, while György stayed in Pécs. The following year we got married, and eight months later we were able to start our life together in Pécs.
- What was the university atmosphere like?
- György: Strict, the requirements were high, but we received all the help from the teachers and the university staff to achieve a good result. The number of staff was not as large as today, the practices and the lectures were well-organized under appropriate conditions.
- Ágnes: All professors and lecturers listed their own field as the most important, and it had a big impact on me. Since I planned to specialize as a general practitioner - who must have adequate knowledge in all areas - I took every subject seriously. Eventually, I did not become a GP, but it still provided a good basis for the professional changes that were necessary for several reasons during my forty-year career. As a university student, we have often felt that we had to learn an unnecessary set of data, although I already considered this as a good workout for the future, so I passed this approach on to our children as well.
- Who were your prominent lecturers?
- György: I remember prominent individuals mostly from theoretical departments. We had many acclaimed, truly characterful professors and lecturers who also greatly shaped our personalities. Such professors like József Tigyi, Béla Flerkó, and Endre Grastyán, but the assistant professors and teaching assistants leading the internships in the institutes were also excellent lecturers. Among them György Sétáló, who later became a professor of anatomy; Árpád Németh, the pathologist and later a professor of forensic medicine who unfortunately died very young; Róbert Ohmacht from the Institute of Chemistry; and my microbiology team leader, Júlia Szekeres I remember the most. It is more difficult to highlight similar characters from the clinics, because the student-teacher relationship was completely different there than at the theoretical institutes, but I still remember András Guseo, who was able to make neurology really enjoyable, interesting. He showed that learning nerve pathways with great effort makes a lot of practical sense; and Professor Károly Ozsváth’s psychiatric lectures were also extremely interesting and attention-grabbing.
- How did György orient yourself towards orthopaedics and Ágnes towards paediatrics?
- György: I accidentally got involved in orthopaedics and locomotor medicine. After graduation, I was admitted to the Balf Spa Hospital, where I came into contact with many musculoskeletal patients who underwent or were to undergo orthopaedic surgeries. The idea that these patients could be helped a lot in a surgical profession matured in me there.
- Ágnes: After a few twists and turns, I got to paediatrics. As I mentioned, I was basically attracted to general practice, but after I had an insight into neurology before university, I thought I should first get a specialist certificate in neurology and only then go out into the field. I worked for a year in Szombathely, in the neurology department, and then moved to Pécs to reunite my family, where I got a job at the Health Service. After a few months, we both applied for a job at the Sopron State Sanatorium, where we were offered company housing and a job with good professional opportunities, I in paediatrics. Our long-term plan was to return to Pécs, which we did in 1986. As there were no vacancies in the district medical service after my specialization exam, I became a full-time school doctor and worked in this position for 25 years. In the meantime, I passed the specialization exams in school health and sports medicine. The inspiration for the latter came from the need for specialised knowledge to care for the students at the Physical Education Primary School and Sports School, as well as for anthropological measurements and analyses in collaboration with the University.
- How did you get to the UK?
- György: I spent many years abroad, mainly in the Anglo-Saxon area (USA) and in countries where the English language and the English method of medicine was used (United Arab Emirates). Anglo-Saxon medicine with its radically different mentality and less authoritarianism was sympathetic, so moving abroad was not a difficult decision. When the Labour Party, then in government in Britain, set up a small hospital system called Treatment Centres to reduce long waiting lists, I knew that was where I belonged. I wasn’t alone in this, getting a job was relatively easy, so many of my colleagues and I took this route. What we learned there was that getting in was relatively easy but staying in was much harder. Quality control is very serious there, even more so nowadays, it’s easy to be shown the door if you make a mistake.
- Ágnes: I moved out a year later, after our elder son became a medical student in Pécs. I spent a year and a half studying languages and doing courses at Warwick University before I got my first post as a locum paediatrician. The biggest challenge was - and still is - dealing with child abuse, which is unfortunately particularly common here and is therefore highly emphasized, with the role of the doctor being strictly regulated.
- How do you feel yourselves there? What is the working atmosphere like?
- György: Life is not easy anywhere, especially not in medicine, even if it seems from the outside. I have everyday problems here too, but at the same time I feel really good about the system here. Hierarchical medicine at home was never to my liking. Here the specialists are more or less equal, and colleagues can discuss problems in a relatively relaxed way. At the same time, there is accountability, everyone is responsible for their own decisions, you cannot appeal to the decision of a chief doctor or a professor. You can ask for advice, of course, but the final decision is individual, with the responsibility that goes with it. This gives a high degree of autonomy and self-confidence.
Our hospital is a special, multinational community, we get along well with each other. The country is multicultural, with all its advantages and disadvantages, but at least our foreignness and accent are not being picked on. The mentality is relatively open, life runs smoothly, the rules are clear, even for non-native speakers. Nothing to complain about. Covid and Brexit may have changed the system a lot, but they haven't made any decisive changes to my daily life so far.
- Ágnes: I am currently working in my fourth job. Unlike my husband, I have never had a Hungarian colleague with whom I could discuss professional issues in my mother tongue. I had to keep an open mind, study what my colleagues trained here do, how they do it, keep learning, adapt to the system. My English colleagues are polite, they help me when I ask for advice, but because of their situation they have no idea what it’s like to put down roots in a foreign country, to work in a new job. Since I’ve had more Indian colleagues, I’ve noticed more care.
- Exactly what jobs do you work in?
- György: I am the chief physician in a 40-bed elective surgery centre, chief surgeon, and clinical director of Orthopaedics for a chain of 6 elective hospitals - Practice Plus Group Hospitals. Our hospital performs planned orthopaedic surgery on a large scale, our main profile being hip and knee replacements, of which we perform around two thousand per year. The annual endoprosthetic output of the hospital chain reaches six thousand operations. We work 8-10 hours a day either in the operating theatre or in the outpatient clinic. I operate less because of my administrative functions, but I still do 20-25 prostheses a month. Having done it for 17 years, I have a routine, so it’s not that demanding. In our hospital, three of the four full-time surgeons are Hungarian, so I feel almost at home. There are no professional rivalries or professional-political clashes, it’s friendly. I also have a good relationship with the nurses, the support staff and the hospital’s financial management, so I enjoy going to work every day. I appreciate them and they treat me in the same way.
The most important improvement in the last three years is that we have introduced hip and knee replacement as a one-day surgery, so the patient can go home the same day. Not everyone, of course, but those who are in good general health, don’t have a lot of internal medical problems and don’t want to spend a long time in hospital are discharged. We have more than 250 such cases and nowadays ten per cent of our patients are operated on in this way. This makes us one of the leading institutions in the UK in terms of patient numbers.
- Ágnes: I have been working as a consultant at Chesterfield Royal Hospital for eight years. I run a developmental neurology practice, where I mainly examine, treat, and follow up children with autism, hyperactivity, and attention deficit disorder. What I find really great is the multidisciplinary approach to pathologies. As the knowledge of professional circles and the population grows, the demand for our work is growing. As Derby County’s Chief Medical Officer for Child Welfare, I also screen children in foster care and children who are up for adoption, my role is to ensure that the required standards are met, in collaboration with Child Welfare Services, Social Workers. Five doctors and seven nurses care for nearly a thousand children.
Most of County Derby is home to poorer, more disadvantaged people than the national average, a situation made worse by Brexit and the pandemic, which has put a significant strain on the service. It’s a job I’ve just been thrown into, but I feel it’s for me. It’s a great feeling to care for children in difficult circumstances, to be part of a professional team that helps them to live in better conditions.
- You work in two different places; does this present any difficulties?
- György: No, since we are only 25-30 minutes’ drive from our workplaces. A lot of people commute, so this distance is close. For me, the time on the motorway - half an hour a day - is like a musical relaxation after a surgical programme.
- Your dinners, I presume, are largely professional meetings.
- György: Of course, because we both live in the world of medicine, we deal with it all day long, all our experiences are related to it. We always discuss interesting cases and lessons learned at home. We both love our profession; we are happy to share what we have done.
- Ágnes: In our private life we have mainly Hungarian company, two doctor couples we meet on weekends, we go hiking together, which we usually end with dinner. Besides family stories, we also talk about the profession.
- Your elder son, Miklós, and your younger son, Bálint, also chose to study medicine in Pécs.
- György: Yes, and it was a very interesting feeling when they told us that in some departments they had the same teachers as we had at our time. Bálint, as a double graduate (medical and dental), was aiming for maxillo-facial surgery, he was enrolled in that training programme and he will start his second year in Manchester in August. He has also submitted his PhD thesis in Pécs, Hungary, and will hopefully be able to defend it in the near future. My son Miklós is an orthopaedic surgeon in Stuttgart, Germany, and is currently working mainly in traumatology, where we have two young grandchildren.
- Are you still in touch with your classmates?
- György: Yes, with many of them, and although it is rare to meet them in person because of the physical absence, these are living relationships. We always go to the class reunions every five years, and this is where we can meet the most. We also have a family connection with our classmates, as my son Miklós’ wife is the child of one of our classmates.
- In retrospect, how much is the significance of attending the Medical University of Pécs?
- György: The university years are the defining years of a person’s life. The Medical University of Pécs gave me very strong theoretical knowledge, and as I hear from my children, it still does. This is the most difficult to acquire, it requires the greatest investment of energy. Based on this, the daily practice can be mastered more easily. The university years are a pleasant experience for me, and I remember my teachers and classmates with fond memories.
- Ágnes: The university years were the best years of my life. The lifelong friendships I made then and the reunions in every five years help to keep that feeling fresh.
Photos:
György Lovász
Ágnes Lakner
Trevor Smith Photography Ltd, Chesterfield