The first week of August 2015 was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. On 5 August 2015, after 10 years of studying, I finally became a GP. One day before, I lost my beloved grandmother, who passed away peacefully in an NHS hospital after months of struggle with severe heart failure and extreme frailty.
My grandmother felt strongly about my career in medicine; she used to tell me that I worked too hard and that my hours were too long. She didn’t understand how I could do so many night shifts and how I could work three Christmases in a row without a fight. She felt so strongly she tried to persuade my younger brother against a career in medicine. It worked; he’s now a dental student.
The last hours of my grandmother’s life were spent in the A&E of her local hospital. At 12.30am she came into A&E and was treated by skilled and dedicated junior doctors and nurses who were working their normal shift pattern.
My grandmother was in the same A&E where I had previously worked a long and unsociable six-month rota as a junior doctor. Six months where I had treated multiple other patients in the same bed where my grandmother now lay. During those six months, I had the same conversations about death and do not resuscitate orders that doctors were now having with my family. I had worked 12 days in a row without a break, and did seven night shifts in a row on a continuous rolling rota.
I worked frequent unsociable hours, evenings and weekends as a junior doctor. I’d come back from work when my family were asleep and leave before they woke up. My fiance, who often didn’t see me for weeks, would have to come outside A&E in between his own junior doctor shifts at another hospital, just so that he could see me for the rushed and hopeful 30-minute break I called a lunch hour. It would be grabbed in between patients, or waiting for the results of investigations. It had no fixed time and was often cut short. It was often delayed, which meant my fiance waited patiently for me for hours on end because he knew it was the only chance he would get.
That rota was relentless and I had felt so overstretched. Once, I shouted in desperation at one of the A&E consultants after a long and frustrating shift, just because it felt like the only thing I could do to have any control at the time.
On 4 August 2015, however, none of these memories crossed my mind. I felt proud of the department I once worked in, felt proud of the NHS and the healthcare professionals that serve it – the ones that are constantly on the frontline, who work tirelessly without seeking gratitude.
I thought about the goodwill of the NHS staff, that the current government do not seem to recognise or appreciate. I thought about my old colleague, a junior doctor; the A&E registrar, who probably has been a junior doctor for more than 10 years of her life, and was one of the most senior doctors on duty that night. Her shift had finished over an hour previously, but she was still in the department and came to see and treat my grandmother outside of her contracted hours. I thought about how I had seen her do this countless times before and how good it felt to now be at the receiving end of someone so committed to her job.
I was taken aback by the kindness of the medical registrar who, at 1am, was the most senior doctor covering medicine in the whole hospital. He spoke openly and sensitively about her prognosis and made us, as relatives, feel that we were in the safest of hands. In those moments I realised exactly what makes a good junior doctor. It’s not the tiring, relentless schedules that they persevere with, it’s not even just about their work ethic; but it’s the humility and empathy that each one serves the NHS with.
On 4 August, I was a junior doctor; but more than that I was a relative.
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