Your Life In My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story

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For myself, this has served as an invaluable introduction to the health system which I am about to enter but have never experienced first-hand. In this heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today’s health service, former television journalist turned doctor, Rachel Clarke, captures the extraordinary realities of ordinary life on the NHS front line.

And it became Rachel’s role thanks to her previous career in TV news that she became the face of TV interviews during NHS Junior doctors strikes that followed. In the end, it boiled down to a battle of words, of who could better manipulate facts and statistics to serve their interests.How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? While it was a seemingly trivial act for the nurse to set aside her duties and sit with Clarke for some time, it meant the world to a desolate and frightened new mother. How can they still be expected to remain kind and cheerful, and not to break down under the sheer weight of emotion? The goodwill and kindness without which the NHS will not survive are being inexorably squeezed out by underfunding, understaffing and the ever more unrealistic demands placed upon a floundering workforce. Many always dream of being a nurse or a doctor specialising in specific areas of medicine, but no-one prepares you for the real life on the front line that is looking after patients and dealing with the most traumatic moments that only a doctor can experience.

They are not and should not be treated as working machines capable of withstanding back-to-back overnight shifts with minimal time to sleep, let alone time to spend with family. Her pride in being an NHS doctor shines through the impending tragedy and general miasma of uncertainty that hangs over its future. The politicisation of medicine is a sorry reality, yet the fact remains that the healthcare system operates under the auspices of higher authority and can therefore never be fully independent from any government body. An informative insight in to how those in power have little regard for our well being and will lie and spin just to fulfill the lie. Under such psychological and physical exertion, how can they still be expected to exude confidence and warmth at a patient’s bedside?This didn’t, however, prepare her for the stress, exhaustion and exhilaration of working as a junior doctor in a health service bursting at the seams. At first I was taken back by the political bias of this story but all I can say now is ‘thank you Rachel’. Through it all, she stayed true to the prioritisation of patient care and expressed her deep attachment and loyalty to the NHS, which threatened to be upended by unreasonable governmental policies.

Rachel worked in the NHS for eight years in total and so she has first-hand accounts of how the NHS was being destroyed brick by brick. Thank you for describing to us exactly what it is like to be a junior doctor and the results of all the political messing with our beloved NHS done by various governments, particularly this one. Over time, such irrational expectations will take a toll on frontline health workers, who are the backbone of the NHS. While the political aspects of the junior doctor dispute are riveting and enlightening, the parts of the book that left the deepest impression on me are those in which Clarke recounts the human experiences that have continuously reinforced her faith in medicine and its healing power.A Sunday Times bestseller, Breathtaking is an insider's account of medicine in the time of coronavirus, based on Clarke’s own experiences working on frontline NHS Covid-19 wards. a decade after we faced the abyss, the compassion and humanity of one NICU nurse remain indelibly etched in my memory. In Chapter 5, aptly titled “Kindness”, Clarke recounts the birth of her son and the vertiginous events that followed as her new-born son began exhibiting signs of seizure. To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person’s life? By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file.