Bookend
Open Start of FY1
Start of FY1
Medical school is over. The title is official, the pandemic is ongoing and the first real step into hospital medicine begins.
Foundation Year 1 · 2020–2021
Foundation Year 1
The starting line
The first year behind the name badge.
Foundation Year 1 began in July 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with borrowed confidence, unfamiliar wards and a pager that suddenly made every problem feel like mine.
Across four rotations, these entries trace the shock of first responsibility, the humour that kept us afloat and the gradual realisation that being a doctor was nothing like being taught by one.
I
First foundation year
2020
The first day as a doctor
26
Journal entries
4
Clinical rotations
Read Foundation Year 1
Four rotations. One first year.
Begin with the first step into foundation training, follow the four clinical rotations in order and finish where FY1 gives way to the next year.
Rotation 1.1
Emergency Surgery
The first rotation turns theory into responsibility through long hours, surgical chaos, hard lessons and the first signs of unravelling.
Rotation 1.2
Neurology
A calmer ward brings different lessons: emotional distance, meaning, humility and the return of a little humanity.
Rotation 1.3
General Medicine
Medicine slows the pace but deepens the questions around death, identity, connection and what being a good doctor actually means.
Rotation 1.4
Orthopaedic Surgery
The first foundation year closes in orthopaedics with family, stability, confidence and a clearer sense of the doctor emerging underneath it all.
Bookend
Open End of FY1
End of FY1
The first year closes with the hospital no longer feeling entirely foreign and a second foundation year waiting on the other side.
Each of you comes here today a hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure and two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That's up to you..Dr Richard Webber Grey's Anatomy
The complete foundation-training journal
Take the journal with you.
Journal of a Junior Doctor is a brutally honest account of what really happens after medical school ends - when confidence is borrowed, mistakes feel fatal and sleep becomes a distant memory.
The first year ended with the hospital finally feeling familiar.
Continue into Foundation Year 2, where responsibility grows, the rotations become more demanding and the question of what kind of doctor comes next becomes harder to ignore.
Continue with Foundation Year 2.