The new Junior Doctor's contract explained

London Calling

I’ve not blogged for a while mainly because things have been changing quite a lot for me in the last couple of months. A couple of years ago (two years, I can’t believe it’s been that long!) I pretty much decided that I didn’t like the particular part of the country that the MMC lottery had placed me in. I didn’t want to spend the remainder of my youth there and I devised a plan to move.

To cut a long and convoluted story short, my plan has now come to fruition. I am now the proud owner of a training number in London and I will now complete the ret of my post-graduate training there. Since Christmas, I’ve spent most of my free time sorting out the practicalities of the move. I’ve been packing, sorting out my paperwork, having multiple conversations with various people at the deaneries

Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity, last week I finally started working in the big smoke and it’s certainly been the case of so far, so good. London hospitals have a reputation for being large, unfriendly and extremely competitive, but the people I’ve met and worked with so far have all been really nice and I feel I’m really going to enjoy working here.

On a more personal note, me and FashionGirl have moved in together and so far, things are going really well.

It’s been a bit of a long haul, but are really slotting into place for me at long last. I’ve got a feeling that I’m really going to enjoy myself over the next few months and years.

Perspective

I've had some big changes in my life over the last month or so, but not as big as some.

I sincerely wish The Little Medic all the best.

Unless it is a matter of life and death

"Severe weather warnings remain in place across the region because of the snow. The advice remains do not travel today unless it is a matter of life or death." said the weather report on the telly this morning.

I sip my mug of tea and peer through the curtains. The world outside is covered in a white blanket and it's still snowing. In the darkness, the snow makes everything look much brighter than normal and, as the snow comes down, the scene outside kind of shimmers. It's like a postcard or a scene from a Dickens novel.

"Do not travel unless it's a matter of life or death," I repeat to myself.

I briefly consider not bothering to try and get to work but I'm covering the Intensive Care unit today, so I think I can safely say the "life or death" thing applies to me. Plus, I know that if I don't turn up, the poor person who's been working on ICU all night will probably have to continue working into the day as well and that would be horrific and unfair.

No, I have to go to work.

My only question is, will I physically be able to get there? I pull on my coat and wellies and go out to survey the damage. My little car is parked on the street covered in about 10cm of snow. The council have had the gritters out and whilst my street has not been treated, the main street has been gritted and I assume that all the other roads on my route to the hospital will have been treated. I reckon if I can get my car to the main street, I'll be able to get to work. Fortunately, yesterday I had the sense to park it at the end of my street, so I'm only about 30m away from the junction.

I turn and go back inside to prepare what I'm going to take:

Hat: check

Coat: check

Gloves: check

Spare jumper: check

Scarf: check

Sandwiches: check

Wash bag: check

Toothbrush: check

Phone: check

Book: check

I pick up my spade as I head out into this particularly cold and frosty morning, crossing my fingers as I do so.

Just a quick note...

...to say a huge thank you to the three men who helped push my car out of the hospital ice-rink car park this evening.

I truly am very, very grateful.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

I was in a bit of a grump yesterday (it was a long day). I feel much better now. There's nothing I can do about the weather, so what will be will be. The good thing about Britain in the snow is that everywhere looks really beautiful and magical. Even the Kebab shop round the corner looked pretty.

I feel much cheerier now so here's a few pictures of this winter and my favourite Christmas song. Sing along if you know the words (I'm not sure Shane does).

Happy Christmas to everyone!

I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas.

At the end October, all the junior anaesthetists in my hospital were given the on-call rota for November to February. The first thing we all looked at was who had to work Christmas and who had to work New Year’s Eve.

This year, I’m lucky enough not to be working Christmas Day and I’m really happy about that. Spending Christmas Day in hospital on-call must be one of the most miserable and depressing experiences known.

Christmas Eve, however is a normal working day in my hospital and I have the misfortune to be doing a theatre list that’s notorious for running over time. (Was I naïve in thinking that in this brave new world of “patient choice,” that patients would “choose” not to have their elective major surgery on Christmas Eve and would choose to have it in the new year instead. Apparently so). I envisage that I’ll leave work at about 7pm on Christmas Eve and my plan is to drive the couple of hundred or so miles to my parent’s home after work that day. With a bit of luck, I’ll get there just in time to hear the bells ring out for Christmas Day.

However, hearing about all the travel dramas because of the weather has me quite worried. I’m just praying that the icy freeze that’s currently enveloping the country has loosened its grip by then because otherwise there’s the distinct possibility I could be spending Christmas stuck at work or worse, stranded in some motorway service station.

My Christmas “holiday” is short lived though, I’ve got to brave the roads again on Sunday evening for my on-call shift on Monday and then it’s back to work for business as usual for the elective operations on Tuesday.

I’m not the only one who has to do this; Dr. Grumble is also rather miffed by the situation.

I know there’ll be people reading this who’ll be thinking “junior doctors these days don’t know they’re born. They only work 48hr weeks whereas when I was a lad we worked 128hr weeks etc… etc… etc…”

But, as Dr Grumble also points out, working in hospital over Christmas used to be fun. Believe me, it really no fun being on call for intensive care over the holiday period. I think this Christmas, I’ll be mostly knackered.

But at least I’m not working Christmas Day his year.

Two things that made me smile today

The sight of two of our recovery nurses - one Iranian, one Australian - laughing and dancing arm-in-arm outside as the snow came down.

The fact that Rage Against the Machine are Christmas number one. Power to the people!

Raising doctors, the "beta" version

I've just read this brilliant post by Dr Edwin Leap MD. It's the text of a lecture he gave to new doctors starting at his hospital in America. It's more about life in general than it is about medicine. It's long, but it's well worth the read so, give yourself ten minutes, make yourself a nice hot cup of tea, sit back and enjoy his words.

Raising doctors, the "beta" version

Who is a doctor?

Beep Beep… Beep Beep…

My mobile phone shrills and I casually reach over and pick it up to read the incoming text message.

You have an appointment with Dr Kavelidis at 16:00 on 17/12/09. Please allow time for parking.

I furrow my brow in confusion. I haven’t made an appointment with my G.P. in fact I haven’t needed to see him in over a year. Besides, I don’t have a clue who “Dr Kavelidis” is, perhaps he’s a new G.P. at the practice. But it still doesn’t make sense I’m sure the GPs at my surgery are busy enough without having to randomly text people on their practice lists to trawl for business. Was this some sort of new QOF thing? Seems unlikely, I’m a healthy young man. Maybe FashionGirl has the answer.

“Darling,” I say and she looks up at me from the magazine that she’s engrossed in. “Did you make me an appointment at the doctors? I’ve just had a text telling me I’ve got an appointment in a couple of days and I never made one.”

She shakes her head at me and says, “No, I didn’t. Let me see that.” She has a look at my phone and says, “It’s odd isn’t it? Especially as there’s no “from” number.”

None the wiser, I delete the message and continue watching the telly. Last time I went to the GP, I did get a reminder text beforehand, so I assumed there’s been a mix up and I’ve go the text by mistake.

Two hours later, it hits me. I do have an appointment on Thursday, but not with the doctor, with the dentist.

I go over to the fridge where I’ve stuck the appointment card and have a look at the names. Sure enough Dr. Kavelidis’ name is on the card, just below "Dr. Chang" and just above, ironically enough, “Dr Anderson.”

So, it does beg the question, “Are dentists ‘doctors?’” On this evidence, apparently they are. It just seems a bit odd to me. Dentistry is incredibly competitive to get into. Like medicine, you need straight As at A-level and then you have to spend five years studying at dental school before you’ve earned the right to call yourself a “dentist.” So why on earth, after all that, would you want to call yourself “doctor”?

It’s not just dentists that are “doctors.” Apparently, these days psychologists are “doctors,” chiropractors are “doctors”, and even nutritionists are “doctors.”

Slag me off if you want, but I spent five years at doctor school to earn the right to call myself “doctor” when I treat patients and I find it rather annoying (and inappropriate) that people with no medical qualifications get to call themselves “doctor” when treating patients.

I know there’s a feeling in the modern NHS that “anyone can do a doctor’s job,” but it’s simply not true. The way I see it, if you think you can be a real doctor, go to medical school and graduate. That way, you’ll see for yourself how “easy” it is.

Now, I totally agree that a PhD is hardly a walk in the park either, and neither is a dentistry degree and I can see that people who’ve worked hard for years at these should have a title to show their achievement.

The solution, I think is to use a system like the do in the USA whereby medical doctors have the suffix MD after their names. I know that MD means something different in the UK, but now dentists, nurses, psychologists, chiropractors and nutritionists are “doctors,” sooner or later, every man jack is going to be a “doctor” and the term will be meaningless.

Dr. Michael Anderson MD

I like the sound of that.

In which we save money for the NHS

I’m on a morning ward round in the Intensive Care Unit and we’re discussing a patient I’d admitted the day before. Mrs Patel is a lady in her sixties with really bad respiratory failure due to a particularly nasty pneumonia. The previous afternoon I thought that if we gave her non-invasive ventilation (NIV) and adequate intravenous fluids, she may just turn the corner and start to get better.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. She continued to deteriorate and quite soon after she arrives on the ICU, her oxygen levels were still dangerously low despite the NIV so in order to prevent her from dying then and there I had to put her into a medically-induced coma, intubate and put her on a ventilator.

So there I was the next day, recalling this story to the ICU consultant, SHO, ward sister and staff nurse. We look at her blood test results, ABGs, chest X-rays etc… and it’s apparent to all of us that whilst this lady will probably get better, it’s going to take a while and she will need to stay on the ventilator for at least a couple of days.

I turn to Richard, the SHO, and say “Could you change her sedation to midazolam & morphine.”

“Sure,” he says as he picks up the drug chart. He crosses off the propofol & alfentanil and writes up what I requested.

(Basically I’ve asked him to change the drugs that are keeping Mrs Patel in a coma. Propofol & alfentanil are shorter acting, but much more expensive. Because we were going to keep her in a coma for a few days, I changed to the longer-acting but much cheaper midazolam & morphine.)

After scrawling the new prescription (it’s so true what they say about doctor’s handwriting) Richard says, “It won’t make any difference, you know.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it doesn’t matter how much money we save by doing stuff like this, they’re still going to cut our pay.”

“True enough,” I concede.

“Well, if the other lot get in, they’ll dock our pay even more!” pipes up Julie, the ICU ward sister

“Could we please save the politics for the coffee room,” comes the irritated voice of our consultant. “Now, could someone find the result of this woman’s most recent ECHO?”

Suitably chided, we get back on with the job in hand.

Casualty

I’m not working this weekend, so I’ve been sitting in front of the telly with a can of beer (Grolsch is my tipple of choice at the moment). Disappointingly, there was nothing I particularly wanted to see on the box. Come Dine With Me didn’t appeal, and I detest the X Factor so much that I won’t even entertain the thought of having it on anymore (I’m seriously considering buying Killing In The Name Of…).

I flicked over to the Beeb and was greeted by the Casualty* theme. I can’t listen to that tune without wanting to say “Will everyone stop getting shot!” in a really bad cockney accent. Previously, I’ve said that I was no fan of medical dramas, but for some reason, I thought I’d give it a go. Maybe it’s because I had nothing else in particular to do or maybe it’s because I’ve just spent a month watching seven series of Scrubs, but I thought I’d see if Casualty had gotten any better since the last time I watched it.

I think it’s definitely improved. I was quite pleasantly surprised and even moderately entertained. Back in the day, Casualty always used to be about “guess the really predictable disaster” and tonight’s episode remained true to those roots. I can sum it up with: Man unscrews valve on bus/fluid starts leaking out/bus goes downhill on narrow country lanes/brakes fail/bus goes over cliff. I don’t think it’ll Casualty will ever top the classic “man in field/combine harvester” episode, but it’s good to see the producers continue to try.

It’s also good to see that at long last, the show has recognised the existence of us junior doctors. I’ve spent more time than I care to remember trying to explain to people that “junior doctor” and “medical student” are not the same thing and then explaining what we junior docs actually do all day. I think having us on telly will help a little bit. The juniors on the show all seem to be very attractive, much more attractive than any group of doctors that I’ve ever worked with, if a bit on the numptyish side.

All in all though, it kept me amused for three quarters of an hour or so, so it’s definitely a big step up on the last time I watched a medical drama on the BBC. I might even consider watching it again next week.

If anyone reading this and thinks that I really need to get a life and get out more, I totally agree - Big Ed has just texted me and now I’m off out dancing…

* “Casualty” is such an old-fashioned name isn’t it? I’d be interested to know if it’s still called “Casualty” any hospital in the UK today (I must see photographic evidence) because, as far as I was aware, they all changed their name to “Accident & Emergency” years ago.

Interestingly, more changes are afoot because it’s been decided that “Accident & Emergency” is now not a good enough name, so it’s going to become the “Emergency Department.”

In about 10 years’ time they’ll probably all go back to being called “Casualty” again. Who makes these decisions? What a waste of time and effort.

Scrubs

Almost exactly a month ago, one of my colleagues lent me the DVD box-sets of Scrubs Series 1-7.

I remember when Scrubs first started. I was still in medical school and at the time, loads of my fellow medical students were raving about how good it was.

I never really got into it though, mainly because, as far as I can recall, it’s never been on terrestrial TV in the UK (correct me if I’m wrong). I watched the occasional episode at mate’s places but would never have said I was a fan of the show.

Until now.

I think the show is absolutely fantastic, and it’s made me laugh out loud more times than I can remember. For those who don’t know, the series basically follows three American doctors as they progress through their training from their intern year through to becoming attending physicians and beyond.

I’ve heard people say that it’s “really realistic.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the show bears much resemblance to every day hospital life, but it does have moments that I really recognise. Bricking it at your first cardiac arrest call, trying to make a relationship work despite the demands of the job, the frustration you feel at the patients who just won’t help themselves as well as those who you feel you’ve made a real difference to are all shown at various points.

I realise this is rapidly turning into an advert, so I’ll stop. Anyway, the DVD is calling, I’m half way through series 7 now, so I guess my normal blogging will resume shortly.

In which I ask for help

One of my old posts keeps getting Japanese spam from a different commentor every time.

Do any of you know how I can stop this happenning without resorting to banning all comments?

Thanks

Sleeping is Cheating

My time working in Intensive Care is drawing to an end. I’ve been working here for three months now and I have only one more shift to go. It’s been really hard work and at times really stressful and emotional, but I think I’ve got a lot out of my placement here. I’ve learned loads of stuff and I think that when it comes to procedures such as central lines, I’ve gone from being “competent” at them to being “good” at them. I think the best thing I've got out of this placement is that I have now answered the question of whether or not I want to be an Intensive Care Physician as a consultant.

As I sit here typing, I think of a weekend I spent with friends earlier in the summer. One of my best friends had his stag do up in Newcastle and we all went up there for a rather debaucherous couple of nights of drinking far too much and abusing the stag. We had several rules to observe on said weekend and one of them was “Sleeping Is Cheating.” This meant that nobody was allowed to sleep during daylight hours and anyone caught doing so was suitably punished.
The reason I’m telling you about this is not because I particularly want to share what a group of mates got up to in a Northern city but that tonight I face a similar situation.

I start work tonight at 8pm in one hospital in one city. I finish my shift at 9am tomorrow morning. However, tomorrow morning at 8am I am expected to start work in my new hospital in a totally different town and work through to 5pm there.

How can this be fair? I’m pretty good at some things but my talents don’t extend to being in two places at the same time. I called my new hospital and was told that I absolutely could NOT have the day off to sleep, and that I MUST come to work as they are all expecting me. They are VERY DISAPPOINTED that I won’t be there at 8am and I should MAKE EVERY EFFORT to get to the hospital as soon as I possibly can.

So, it looks like I won’t be sleeping for a while, but then again, sleeping is cheating isn’t it?

Fuck the BNP

I’m not usually political on this blog, but the appearance of the BNP’s Nick Griffen on Question Time and the subsequent domination of the media by this fascist’s agenda has me absolutely fuming.

I don’t pay my licence fee for fascists and their followers to come onto political shows on one of the UKs great institutions and spout their hate-filled racist drivel.

Let’s recap some of the BNP’s policies (words in italics are my own comments).

· The forced deportation of 2,000,000 people (or 1 in 30) from the UK. Let’s not forget these will be British passport holders or working here with valid visas. These people will be stripped of their assets including homes and cars on the basis of skin colour.
· Millions of other Brits “of foreign descent” will be “encouraged” to return to their “country of origin.” Exactly what form this “encouragement” will take, I can only shudder to think.

I could keep going with a whole list of thing that these evil fuckers want to do, but I won’t because this post will get too long and I think you get the point already.

And yet, we have so many people who think that the BNP should be given a voice. I had to walk out of the ICU coffee room on Friday because I was so mad with one of the consultants who thought it was right that the BNP should be on Question Time. Fellow bloggers such as The Jobbing Doctor think it’s OK for people to say stuff like “Islam is wicked,” and “There’s no such thing as a Black Englishman” on national television. People who defend the BNP’s right to hate speech seem to have no regard for the targets of the BNP’s vitriol. They have no regard for their fellow citizens, instead they prefer to stand behind the right of the racists even though the very things the racists are saying would deny rights to some of their fellow countrymen based on skin colour.

Why do people in the country find it so hard to say “No.”?

What happened to the British backbone? Why can’t we stand up to these evil people and say, “This is WRONG. You are WRONG. What you are saying is WRONG and we shall have no part of it.”?

This whole episode is deeply shaming on us as a nation and a lot of people need to take a good look at themselves and be honest about what their values really are.

Fuck the BNP.

Thinking about this is getting me angry again, so I’m going to leave you with the words of a Mr Richard Reynish whose letter was published in The Guardian on Friday.

"As Britain debates the BNP’s appearance on Question Time, it would be a good idea to learn from developments elsewhere, before it’s too late. Here in Denmark, where I have lived for 30 years, we have witnessed the systemic hijacking of a progressive and tolerant culture by the far right dressed in “respectable” sheep’s clothing. In 10 years, Denmark has been transformed into a country where racism is in the mainstream.

Free speech has protected hate speech, and opponents of censorship have consistently defended the rights of unscrupulous populists and incendiarists. When the media take this line, a very wicked circle is started: the inflammatory accusations of racists become self-fulfilling prophecies, as minorities are increasingly marginalised and excluded. Mainstream political parties, attempting to win back voters from the far right, make an endless series of concessions, attempting in vain to demonstrate understanding of the concerns of voters tempted by simple xenophobic policies. But the far right will always have a more extreme policy, and a new provocative proposal, which keeps them permanently centre stage in the media.

The “debate” about immigration – in reality a platform for populist racism – dominates politics, poisons serious dialogue an guarantees one thing: racist dominance of the media and the political agenda. "

Richard Reynish
Copenhagen, Denmark.

In which I embarrass myself

It was Friday and once again, our intensive care unit was overfull. We didn’t physically have enough space to accommodate all the people in the hospital who need to be on ventilators. The short-term solution for this common problem was to use the ventilators in the theatre recovery area and to nurse our patients there. This arrangement cannot last too long though as we don’t have enough nurses to properly look after the extra patients and the theatre recovery ventilators are needed for, well, for theatre recovery.

A more permanent solution is to discharge patients from the intensive care unit (ICU) to make space for the extra patients. If they are well enough, sometimes patients can go to the ward, but on Friday we really didn’t have anyone in that position. Our only option was to transfer one of our patients to another ICU in a different hospital where they did happen to have some space.
Obviously it’s unfair and unsafe for paramedics to transport these critically ill and unstable patients by themselves, so one what happens is that one of the intensive care doctors and one of the ICU nurses travel with these patients in the ambulance to look after them during the journey, and also to hand over the details of their care to the doctors and nurses in the receiving hospital.

And so it is that I find myself in the back of an ambulance taking one of our patients to another hospital.

Anyone who’s ever taken a ride in the back of an ambulance will tell you that the windows are obscured so you can’t see out. Usually I’m not susceptible to travel sickness, but this day was different. We had the heating up to stop our patient getting cold, the ambulance rocked rolled as we went round corners. I hadn’t been feeling well most of the day, I was tired from being on call the day before and hadn’t eaten very much because I had an upset belly.

It was the speed bumps that really did it for me. Andy, the nurse who was travelling with me said, “You’re being unusually quiet today, Michael.”

I looked at him, but couldn’t seem to focus properly. His features swam before my eyes and I knew then that I was going to spew.

“I feel horrific,” I mumbled. “I’m going to be sick”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

I could only nod because my mouth was filling with saliva and I was holding my breath in an attempt to delay the inevitable long enough to grab a sick bowl.

“Here, take this” said Andy as he quickly pulled a cardboard sick bowl from the pile in which it was stacked.

I accepted it gratefully and promptly vomited into it.

“There he blows!” came the amused voice of the paramedic in the front seat as up came the remnant of my cornflakes and the cup of coffee that I’d had just before leaving. But it didn’t stop there, I spent the next quarter of an hour retching bile as the ambulance zoomed through the city with its blue lights on and the siren going. I hadn’t felt so miserable for ages.

I had never felt so grateful to see another hospital as I did when we pulled up outside the A&E of the receiving hospital and I was able to get out into the fresh air. Our patient was absolutely fine though and on the inter-hospital transfer paper work I wrote “Uneventful transfer” in the comments section and, of course, I made Andy promise not to breathe a word about this to anyone else in the ICU.

Credit

During a quiet moment yesterday, I was able to make my way down to the doctor’s mess and spend 20 minutes or so with a newspaper and a cup of tea. Flicking through the pages of the a Saturday magazine, I came across an interview with hip hop star Dizzee Rascal.

Who is the biggest hero of the
decade?
“Nurses, doctors and firefighters”

After what seems like years of negative stories about the NHS, it’s nice to hear us being given some credit for once.

Now I Know

I’ve not blogged much lately because my current job is really hardcore and I haven’t had that much time and I didn’t want to spend the free time I have had blogging because it reminds me of work.

In August, when I started working in Intensive Care the lead consultant, Dr. Cullen, asked me whether or not I wanted to do Intensive Care as a future career. At the time I really had no idea, and told him as much. You see, to us anaesthetists, Intensive Care work is a bit like Marmite in that it we either love it or hate it.

I worked in ICU in my first year of anaesthetic training, but at that time, I felt I didn’t really get a feeling of whether it would be something I’d like to pursue further down the line. I felt that I didn’t know enough stuff to be really useful and I didn’t know enough to actually make a real difference to the patients that I was helping to look after.

I’m now coming to the end of my current attachment in ICU and yesterday Dr. Cullen asked me again if I would consider intensive care as a career. This time I had an answer for him – no.

There are things that I really like about working here, I like it when we’re given a rapidly deteriorating patient, and I can stop their demise and (hopefully) put them on the road towards recovery. I actually like going round the wards and being able to be useful to other doctors who are struggling to look after their ill patients. I like the fact that I can actually do the majority of medical procedures, I’ve done dozens of central lines, arterial lines, intubations, chest drains, difficult venflons etc… etc… and these things no longer hold any mystery or worry for me. I like the fact that the ICU nurses are so switched-on and the fact that there are so many of them means that they can help us doctors out more which means I get to concentrate more on actually trying to get our patients better.

ICU is no land of milk and honey though. There are lots of things I really don’t like. A while ago, I wrote about why doctors get stressed and about some of the ways they cope. I said that simply being around unwell people is uncomfortable for people who have dedicated their lives to trying to make people well. I’m finding this really true of myself. Even when everyone is totally stable and there’s not much happening, I find just being on the intensive care unit stressful. The constant beeps, the almost continual alarms of the infusion pumps, monitors and ventilators, the fact that I know that things can, and often do, go tits up at any moment, all this things conspire to put my blood pressure up.

Our patients are all teetering on the brink of death. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that they’re well past the brink and with our machines we are desperately trying to push them back ONTO the brink so they have a fighting chance of living. This means that one of our patients will frequently drop their oxygen levels or blood pressure to a dangerously low level. They often hallucinate and try to pull out the very tubes that are stopping them dying. While the nurses are very good at sorting these things out, often they’ll need help just to stop the patient from expiring and it’s me that has to go and sort these problems out. Often I feel I’m fighting a pitched battle against the very people I’m meant to be helping. I find it frustrating that I can’t talk to my patients and that they’re often on the ICU for so long with only very tiny improvements to their health each day.

And then there’s the relatives. Seeing your husband/son/mother/grandpa/sister/friend unconscious and hooked up to all our machines must feel horrible. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if I saw my mother lying their as one of our patients, I shudder at the thought. We try our best to explain what we are doing but I find having these conversations difficult simply because I don’t know what’s going to happen to their loved one. The two commonest questions a relative asks are “Is my loved one getting better?” and “Is my loved one going to die?” And the trouble is, often I simply don’t know if they’re going to live or die and, unlike when I was a physician, often I don’t even have a handle on how likely survival or death is. The uncertainty is often really hard for relatives to understand and deal with. But what I think is even more difficult is the timescale. As I already alluded to, patients stay unconscious with only very slight changes in their condition for days or weeks. We as doctors can see the subtle changes in their inotrope requirement, ventilatory demands etc… but basically, from the outside they look exactly the same. (Actually, as time passes, ICU patients look aesthetically worse as they swell up with fluid and accumulate puncture scars from all the tubes we keep sticking into them.) While we try to explain what’s happening, the seeming lack of progress after such long periods of time is often really distressing because relatives are sort of suspended in a seemingly unending, hellish limbo. Seeing relatives upset in turn upsets me because I too want their loved one to get better quickly, but it’s rarely possible and it leaves me wishing I could do more when I just can’t.

Dealing with other doctors can be wearing as well. There’s a constant trickle of calls for little things like venflons, lumbar punctures, central lines etc…from acopic ward doctors but that stuff doesn’t really bother me. I use my discretion. I help out if the request is reasonable and I’m free and able, if they’re just taking the piss and trying to get me to do their job for them, I have no qualms about telling them where to go. No, there are two things that really get me. Firstly, some doctors seem to have the belief that every unwell person should be looked after by the intensive care team. This really isn’t the case. Sick patients often don’t need Intensive Care, but they need the ward doctors to pay close attention to their condition and give appropriate treatments and sometimes, it’s hard to get ward doctors to understand this. Secondly, there are the group of patients who have been blatantly mismanaged on the wards and then I get a call to see them and am somehow expected to perform miracles. This frustrates me no end too.

And finally, there are the times where it really does all go wrong. There’s the fast bleeps, there’s the trauma calls and there’s the cardiac arrest calls. On average, I go to two or three of these every shift (my record is eleven). These are the situations where people are literally at (or through) death’s door. Sometimes, there’s not much for me to do at these calls, but sometimes there is. Often they’re just a horrible disaster and often the patient dies, sometimes in a more painful and disgusting way than you ever thought was possible.

So all in all, I’m working hard in Intensive Care, but I’d hate to do this forever. There’s too much drama, too much stress, too much politics, and too much frustration. If I had to do this forever, I think I’d end up worrying myself into an early grave, there are far easier ways of earning a living. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that two weeks ago, I found my first grey hair.

Not everyone is happy

Apparently the pigs are a bit miffed about being blamed for the current pandemic...

What is really important?

“Dr. Lin, can I have a word please?”

Dr. Lin our college tutor which means that she is the person in charge of looking after the training of the junior anaesthetists in my hospital. I’ve worked with her a couple of times and she appears a pleasant lady. I want to speak to her about something that I’ve had on my mind for a long time now, but have only recently made a proper decision on.

Dr. Lin regales me with an even look and replies, “Certainly Michael, do you want to come through to my office?”

I follow her through to her little room and she clears a stack of patients’ records off her workspace and asks me “What can I do for you?”

I’ve been over this moment many times in my head and I figured the best thing for me to do is to just come straight out and say what I want to.

“I’d like to leave the rotation.”

I state the words simply. This is one of the biggest professional decisions I’ve made in my career and, to me, it feels like I’ve lit the blue touch paper. But there’s no fanfare, no fireworks, just a slightly surprised look in Dr. Lin’s brown eyes. I fill the silence.

“You see, my other half, she works in fashion and, as you can imagine, there’s been lots of job losses in retail over the past year or so. Anyway, she’s had to leave her job here and none of the retail firms are recruiting at the moment. She’s actually managed to get herself another job – one that’s actually better than the one she left – but it’s not here, it’s in London. London’s where all the big retailers have their head offices. She’s searched for a job round here and there really isn’t anything that she wants to do. So, she’s taken the job in the capital. She’s moved there already and I’d like to follow her.”

Dr Lin breaths out slowly, during one of our days working together, I chatted to her about my girlfriend and what she does, so she sort of knew a bit about our situation already. She takes her glasses off, slowly rubs her nose and speaks.

“You know Michael, I understand where you’re coming from. I think from my point of view, it’ll be a real shame to see you leave here. The other consultants and the secretaries all say good things about you, but if you want to leave…” her voice tails off and she sits back in her chair and sighs.

“You probably aren’t aware of this but one of my good friends was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and is now off work, probably for good. When something like that happens to someone you really know, it brings a lot of things home. It really makes you think about life and what’s really important. And I’ll tell you what’s important…” She’s more animated now, she sits forward in her chair and jabs her glasses in my direction.

“Health, happiness, love… these are things that are important. Turning up here at the hospital to work every day, that’s not important, not in the long term, but love is. So, like I say, I totally understand why you want to go and be with your girlfriend, you two have been together a while now haven’t you?”

I nod.

“So of course I’ll support you when you want to leave.”

“Thank you,” is all I can say.

“Have you told the deanery about it yet?”

“Yes,” I reply. “I’ve already asked them what I need to do to transfer my number and I’m going to fill in the application form this weekend.

“Good.”

“Could I put you down as one of my referees?”

“Yes, of course you can.”

“Thank you very much Dr. Lin” I say once more and stand up and head for the door. I’m half way out when Dr. Lin says

“Oh, Michael.” I turn to see her with a conspiratorial smile playing on her lips. “Do you think that she’s the one?”

I give her a broad grin in return and say, “We shall see…”