New Beginnings

I have a job.

MMC has meant months and months of dark days, heartache and stress for myself and thousands and thousands of other junior doctors. The powers that be have shown their colours and have fed us and the public misinformation and lies time and time again. There have been many tears shed and thousands of lives have been changed forever this travesty which went all the way to the highest court in the land.

Since the computer said “No” after round one, I have contacted hospitals in New Zealand and Australia and received some very positive feedback regarding job opportunities. I’ve joined two locum agencies so I could earn some money in the meantime. I’ve written a non-medical CV and asked some friends in London about how I’d start a career in finance. I didn’t want to do any of the above but felt I had to formulate plans B and C because the spectre of unemployment was looming larger and larger hour by hour.

I really feel like I’ve managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Like I’ve scored a last-minute equaliser or gained a death-row reprieve. I feel kind of shocked that, for me at least, all this hassle is over. No more frantically checking NHS jobs and BMJ careers every single evening for positions that come and go faster than fireworks on bonfire night, no more endless hours filling out sprawling application forms, no more trying to explain to perplexed people why I was going to be an unemployed doctor. The bitter shame is that MMC has left thousands of doctors just like me still fighting and desperately trying to find a job or deciding what they’re going to do when our contracts end next week.

You know, the ultimate irony in all this was just how straight-forward the round two interview was. They looked at my CV and my other achievements. The interviews and the exam took about an hour and a half altogether. I didn’t say anything stupid and at the end of it all, they decided that they liked me and offered me a job. Easy.

It does raise the question that how on earth could something so simple turn into such an unprecedented disaster?

So, here it goes. A week on Wednesday, I start a new job in a new deanery a couple of hundred miles from where I’m living right now. A new start, a new challenge, a new specialty – I can’t wait.

Bring it on.