In 2010, after six years of training and further six years on the wards, I resigned from my job as a junior doctor. My parents still haven't forgiven me.
Last year, the General Medical Council wrote to me to say they were taking my name off the medical register. It wasn't exactly a huge shock, as I hadn't practiced medicine in half a decade.
It was, however, excellent news for my spare room, as I cleared out box after box of old paperwork, tearing files up fast. One thing I did rescue from the jaws of death was my training portfolio (档案袋). All doctors are recommended to log their clinical experience, in what's known as reflective practice'. On looking through this portfolio for the first time in years, my reflective practice seemed to involve going up to my hospital on-call room and writing down anything remotely interesting that had happened that day.
Among the funny and the dull, I was reminded of the long hours and the huge impact being B. junior doctor had on my life. Reading back, it felt extreme and unreasonable in terms of what was expected of me, but at the time I'd just accepted it as part of the job. There were points where I wouldn't have stepped back if an entry read "had to eat a helicopter today".
Around the same time that I was reliving all this through my diaries, junior doctors in the here and now were coming under fire from politicians. I couldn't help but feel doctors were struggling to get their side of the story across(probably because they were at work the whole time)and it struck me that the public weren't hearing the truth about what it actually means to be a doctor. Rather than shrugging my shoulders and ignoring the evidence, I decided I had to do something to redress thebalance.
So here they are: the diaries I kept during my time in the NHS, verrucas()and all. What it's like working on the front line, the consequences in my personal life, and how, one terrible day, it all became too much for me. (Sorry for the spoiler of my book beforehand, but you still watched Titanic knowing how that was going to play out.)
Along the way, I'll help you out with the medical terminology(术语) and provide a bit of context about what each job involved. Unlike being a junior doctor, I won't just drop you in the deep end and expect you to know exactly what you're doing.
