Ed Patrick
(Picture: PR handout)Not many comics claim their act makes them better at sending people to sleep but Ed Patrick does just that.
The doctor-turned stand up combines performing and broadcasting with working as an NHS anaesthetist.
He said: “Everyone in medicine needs something outside, if you just live for the job it can spit you out, you have to have something outside.
“Working in medicine doesn’t make you a better comedian, you still have to write and perform like anyone. But it gives you a different perspective to come from.
“Does comedy make you a better doctor? I’d say so. A lot of medicine is about communication, building rapport, and working under pressure. It benefits from the skillset in comedy.”
His new book Catch Your Breath lifts the lid on working during the pandemic and how comedy helped as Covid took hold.
The former student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who started working as an anaesthetist in 2018, said: “We work with people who can’t breathe for themselves and put people on ventilators so we were among the first people to move across to ICU as things got serious.”
He talks openly of “the horror” of working in the NHS as the death toll mounted, saying: “There wasn’t a lot of joy, we weren’t seeing people that were getting better and walking out. It was quite the opposite.
“That has a big impact on the staff and there was this constant cycle of difficulty and there was no respite.”
