For as long as I can remember, I’ve been scared of dying. Not in that vague, philosophical “we all go someday” way—but properly terrified. Heart racing. Stomach flipping. The sort of fear that sneaks up on you in traffic jams or while brushing your teeth.
Which, given I spend most of my working life in an ED surrounded by people very much trying to die, feels… problematic. You’d think constant exposure might desensitise me. It hasn’t. What it’s done is turn me into an Olympic-level compartmentaliser. If there were medals for pushing existential dread into a tiny box marked “Later”, I’d be on the podium.
All of which probably explains why it was something of a shock when the talk that hit me hardest at The Big Sick conference in Zermatt—a place otherwise dedicated to skiing, schnapps, and people yelling “après!”—was 25 minutes of someone calmly dismantling my greatest fear.
Then Matt Morgan – critical care doc, regular BMJ writer, and frankly infuriating overachiever—took to the stage. I’d clocked his name before and, wrongly, filed him under “medic who writes because they’re halfway (totally) out the profession”.
He’s not.
Turns out, Matt is very much still in the game—full-time ICU consultant in Wales, honorary professor (twice, naturally), and—because why stop there—a PhD in artificial intelligence. It’s the sort of CV that forces you to think long and hard about the number of hours you’ve wasted scrolling through Rightmove.
Anyway, his talk—“Life 2.0: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Living”—was brilliant. Genuinely. If you do one useful thing today, make a cup of tea and watch it. It’s better than whatever admin you’re pretending isn’t piling up.
The Talk
The idea is simple: Matt shares stories of ten people who died—properly died—and were brought back. Which, in itself, is interesting enough. But what makes it stick is what came next.
Like Mike. A fisherman who loved the bleak beauty of the Welsh coast. Out on the water, alone, where he felt most at peace. Until the sea took him. A wave, a moment, and he was gone.
Matt showed us the GoPro footage. There’s Mike—blue, pulseless, clinically dead. And somehow, improbably, not dead.
Not because of luck. But because he wasn’t really alone.
That day, on that beach, there just happened to be:
- A CPR instructor
- A competitive open-water swimmer doubling as a CCTV operator
- A nurse
- An off-duty coastguard
- And a handful of strangers who did exactly what needed doing
They saved him. Together.
If you work in prehospital care, you’ll recognise this for what it is: just another Tuesday. But that’s kind of the point. We talk a lot about survival in medicine like it’s an individual sport. It’s not. It never was. Survival is a team event—always has been.
The Reminder
Healthcare loves a hero narrative. We are the centre of the story, the fixer, the one who knows what to do. It’s a seductive role. But sometimes, the real skill isn’t stepping forward—it’s knowing when to step back.
There’s power in following. There’s grace in being part of the collective.
The Craft
If you’re even vaguely interested in what makes a good talk stick, this was a masterclass. Pure Ross Fisher P3—story, media, delivery—all perfectly judged. Not too slick. Not too scrappy. Just that sweet spot where it feels effortless, but you know it isn’t. The slides added to the narrative instead of fighting for attention. The pacing was deliberate—pauses in the right places, not because he’d forgotten what came next, but because he knew exactly when to let a moment land.
And best of all, he resisted every temptation to make it about himself. No TED-style “I nearly left medicine but then I had an epiphany” nonsense. No photos of him running ultramarathons for charity. No emotional striptease. Just a proper story, well told, where the patients stayed at the centre. It’s the kind of talk that reminds you why delivery matters. Because the best stories in the world fall flat if you forget who they’re for. And Matt didn’t. Not once.
The Message
And yes, he talks about wellbeing—but before you roll your eyes and reach for your mouse, stay with me. I’m as done as anyone with the endless parade of mindfulness workshops and talks telling us to breathe. I breathe all day—it’s not working. But this felt different. No preaching. No relentless positivity. Just a reminder that what we do—what we remember, what our patients remember—matters.
What stuck with me—long after the slides and the ski trip hangovers faded—is the uncomfortable truth that most of us are sprinting through life like it’s a time trial. Tick the boxes. Do the job. Get the pension. Forget that the whole thing could end mid-sentence. There’s no prize for being too busy to notice you’re alive. The real work isn’t surviving the shift or smashing the to-do list. It’s figuring out what you’re going to do with Life 2.0 when it lands in your lap. What really lingers is the quiet challenge buried in it all—what would you do if you got a second shot? Not the theoretical “live every day like it’s your last” nonsense, but the real version. Woken up, dragged back, and handed the kind of reset most of us don’t get. Would you change anything? Or just carry on, moaning about the rota and doom scrolling your way through life?
I’ve already handed his book, A Second Act, to people I care about. I’ve sent the audiobook—read in Matt’s soothing Welsh lilt—to my whole department. Because there’s something in it. A quiet, necessary reminder that survival is not the point. Living is.
And maybe we don’t need to wait until the worst happens to start figuring out what we’re doing with the time we’ve got. Because one day, you might be dragged out of the sea. And the question won’t be did you make Professor; it’ll be what you actually did with the time you had.
