Being a doctor
Now I feel I need to strike a very small note for the NHS who in more ways than one has been responsible for me being here today and more than almost anyone are responsible for making me who I am today and I am not trying pass the buck here or pass the blame but I think even I need to accept a modicum of responsibility for me ; and also it is all too easy to denigrate all of he NHS but in reality if it were not for the staff who do and love what they do and very often go above and beyond what their work contrasts say they should’ be doing then and only then would the whole NHS grind to a halt , and and this too is why i intensely dislike all of those union officials yoou hear on the news, such as bob crow to name but one
and I remember vividly being a junior house doctor running around the wards with white coat and pagers And pens hanging off me and when it comes too attire well you Had all the bloke standing on a ward round in their long sleeved shirt and tie and essentially sweltering in the heat of the hospital corridors and then you had all of the female junior doctors who could swan in to work in a t-shirt and flipflops but so long as the t-shirt had some accoutrements such as a sequin or two then that could be considered smart . but we had to wear leather soled shoes and shirt and tie . and a consultant siting us all down to congratulate all of us on our first step to a long and productive career and then the same consultant saying to all of us that having lots of pagers was not a sign of importance – in fact it was quite the opposite the opposite and also having an ever so slightly hang dog appearance from working the night before, and listening attentively to the consultant who was dispensing his or her words of wisdom and then there was the outright unbridled fear at doing ones first night on call and realising that you were essentially the back stop for all of the patients in in the hospital
and this is where consultants fell in to two brackets there were those who ruled by fear and loathing and then thre were those who were just being bloody good and nice people
And I also I remember Being a registrar in anaesthetics and the feeling you had when you turned up to the next patient who was in a bit of a state snd all the other junior doctors turned to you looking with a significant degree of relief that you were there and would take charge and everything would be ok and also I remember there were the surgical registrars and senior house officers who were the complete opposite who turned up invariably with a significant degree of self-importance matched only by their lack of understanding of their very own patient and my goodness they were about as useful as a seamstress at a Velcro convention and at any emergency situation they were similarly useful.
and I do appreciate i am giving the surgeons a bit of a tough time here and it is not for me to speculate about their reasons for becoming surgeons but very quickly i realised that it would be quite useful to be able to put everything back together again after you had chopped out whatever bit of offending body part it was that you were removing and so a significant part of your training was directed to stitching everything back together again but i could not be bothered with all of that i was far more interested in diagnosing the origin of a patients illness rather than stitching everything back together again I mean I was not a seamstress and as I ever so slowly I rose up the training ladder of intensive care and anaesthetics ; well I think it was a very comprehensive training where one felt like one could do everything that the consultants were doing and i to remember becoming a consultant which necessitated an interview with 10 or 11 people all sitting around a table snd I was not exactly sure how I was supposed took at everyone when you were giving your answers
and I do remember the patient who we had collectively saved his life so that on intensive care unit all he could say was that how unhappy he was that the surgeons had not sewn up his skin exactly so that the huge out stretched wings of an eagle tattooed to his chest were uneven , and the irony that he could even complain was somewhat lost on this fellow, but I did not expect this to be otherwise anyway sand. this was consistent with my teaching on another teaching ward round by a lovely consultant who said to us all what do you think about when you see a tattoo, and he said you want to think about was hepatitis C and low IQ and so began my intense dislike for any tattoo’s
ok and also I remember cocking up completely and I was rushing around like all of the other junior doctors did and I was working on a cardiology ward where we had all of the patients coming in with infective endocarditis; which meant we had to prescribe a small truck load antibiotics for each patient and I remember gathering up every patient’s t drug chart on the ward becsausae this was the most time efficient way to do all of the drug prescriptions for each patient and I remember having the chart for one patient and i thought it was for another patient and I prescribed penicillin despite there being in very large red ink warning allergic to penicillin , and thank god the nurses had begun their drug round late
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