Blog Articles
The Covid Diaries 3
Saturday 18th April 2020 This is all total madness! Wherever I look, I see the denial of the obvious. At my trust, we...
Reconstructing a different life 2
Part 2: Terrified I was ventilated for 10 days. My first recollection after my “near death experience” was post...
Reconstructing a different life 1
Part 1: a moment in time In March 1987 my life changed forever, one morning on my way to work. Everything...
Renegotiating: When Worlds Collide
The evening started like any other, a day spent sleeping poorly, counting the hours until another long night spent in the emergency department. My disguise laid out; dark green scrubs, pens, stethoscope and an ID badge. My hair is scraped back off my shoulders and I...
Re-levelling the hierarchy
Do you remember....... Three little words, but three words that can strike fear into even the most experienced of clinicians. Do remember that patient you sent home? Do you remember that patient you referred to me? Do you remember that patient you operated...
Reckoning: hopelessness and helplessness
She was the first patient of my 10am shift a couple of months ago but I’ve thought a lot about her and her children since then. I spent three hours talking with her and about her. Yet, in the end, I couldn’t really help her. She and her friend followed me into the...
Re-connecting: the impact of patients on clinicians’ lives
It was back in 1994, when I was doing my medical house job, that I met Peter. Peter was a man in his late sixties and he suffered with COAD… that’s what we called COPD back then! When I say he suffered with it I mean he really suffered. He’d got to the stage where he...
Re-calibrating: a different view
A failed kidney transplant patient, he had spent large part of his life in and out of hospital even though he was only seven. He knew all about doctors and nurses, blood tests and operations. He did not like being in hospital and he did not like being told what to do....
Re-considering : Clinical decision making
Shared clinical decision making. A phrase I hear myself saying regularly; a concept I encourage, a principle I endorse, the backbone of my clinical practice. Or so I like to think. But in the last few weeks a couple of events have led me to question my principles, and...
Re-awakening: grief
The message stopped me dead in my tracks when it came through. There, in black and white on my phone screen. In that moment, unable to un-read or no longer know. Fact, reality, life. Or rather death. What was supposed to be a joyous celebration of new life; the...
Re-defining: lessons from the other side
Being ‘on the other side’ is the most valuable medical educational experience I have ever had that can never be taught in the classroom. Having been fit and well all my life, when I started getting swollen ankles at only 19 years old I didn’t...