The doctor will see you now...

Welcome & thanks for stopping by. When I started work several years ago as a junior doctor, I thought my life would change for ever, and I was right – it did, just not in the way I thought it would. I always pictured myself running down corridors with my white coat billowing in the wind just like they did in Holby City. In the picture I had in my head, patients would thank me and colleagues would support me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. From that first day I stepped onto the wards and to this day, the rollercoaster never really stopped. There is nothing quite like the ice cold grip of fear the first time you hear the crash bleep screech out at you at 4am, or being confronted by a sword wielding, intoxicated drug dealer in A&E three hours after your shift ended, or the palpitations brought on by the constant fear of getting something wrong and maybe, just maybe, someone drying because of something you didn’t do – or worse, did do! I rotated through the hospital departments seeing everything from birth to death before settling for psychiatry as my career path. From there it went from the bizarre to the ridiculous. On my way, I saw bullying worse than anything you might see in a school yard and politics more complex than Westminster. At times, I found myself in very dark places because of the things I saw and the pain I went through. It took a lot to drag me out of this hole. I did however drag myself out because of the fun, love and support I would find in surprising places. I always joked that I could write a book about the things I’ve seen and that led to this blog. No offence is intended and no names or places are real but everything I write really did happen and it might have happened in a hospital near you.