Blog Articles
The Covid Diaries 4
Saturday April 25th 2020 I once heard my Mum say, “we will get through this.” In the current situation of...
Reconstructing a different life 4
Part 4: Resumption My parents in law had decided that my wife, son and I deserved a holiday. They were taking us to...
Reconstructing a different life 3
Part 3: The garden That evening I was taken back to theatre to have an external fixator fitted to the femur. The...
Re-haunting: The day the bikes came
The first pre-alert of the day probably had nothing to do with the annual bank holiday biker jaunt to the coast. A car carrying three young men had crashed. I can't remember the detail, but I do remember a sense of anticipation; possibly even excitement. I...
Re-juvenating: lessons from patients
Working with sick children is a journey that has its joys, its pain, its ups and downs. It is highly rewarding to accompany the child and their parents in their journey but, the most challenging scenario that any health professional dreads is dealing with child death....
Re-adjusting expectations
We had a fifty one year old gentleman with NASH (non alcoholic steatohepatitis) who had presented with haematemesis on our ITU outreach list on the previous Friday with a litre of haematemesis witnessed in A&E. There was no gastro on call over the weekend so he...
Remember – parental instinct; ignore at your peril
Over the years there are many many times when I have felt an enormous amount of respect and empathy for the parents of the children I have been involved in caring for. As a junior doctor I worked for six months as a paediatric SHO. It was a general paediatric job,...
Reflections: avoiding burnout – we need to look in the mirror.
I’m starting to look old. I noticed it quite by accident recently when I thought I had a mark on my neck, running lengthways from the top to bottom. Tipping my head back, I tried to wipe the mark away but then realised it was a fold in my skin, which looked deeper and...
Re-evaluating: from protocol to personal.
Some conversations are difficult - really difficult. We know we need to have them; explore options, weigh up risks and benefits, talk about how the end of life may be. Wouldn't it be so much easier if there was just a standard script - one that everyone already knew;...
Replacing: Dr. Robot, Mr Quintana and the Lord of the Rings
Have you seen the news? Perhaps you caught it on social media? “Robot doctor tells patient’s he’s going to die.” I had not seen it , and was not particularly interested, until I found myself watching the TV news. Even as the story started, I had no particular...
Re-normalising – whatever that may be….
He was just another immigrant detainee asking for his protocol medical check-up at the local walk in centre. Usually this was a request for some pain relief – sleeping on police station benches with no blankets leads, unsurprisingly, to back pain. Accompanied by two...
Reminders: Bart Simpson’s socks
Every clinician has a moment in their careers that makes them stop, reboot, reflect and maybe even change direction completely. Such moments can be life changing and can be a hair’s breadth from the individual leaving health care for good, as so beautifully...