Bookend
Open Start of FY2
Start of FY2
The hospital is familiar now, but greater independence brings a different kind of uncertainty as the second foundation year begins.
Foundation Year 2 · 2021–2022
Foundation Year 2
Independence and uncertainty
Knowing more, doubting differently.
Foundation Year 2 began with the hospital no longer feeling entirely foreign. I could work more independently, make faster decisions and carry greater responsibility - but confidence did not make the choices any simpler.
Across four rotations, these entries follow harder calls, shifting ambitions and the widening gap between the career I had imagined and the doctor I was actually becoming.
II
Second foundation year
2021
Greater clinical independence
30
Journal entries
4
Clinical rotations
Read Foundation Year 2
Four rotations. One final foundation year.
Begin with the step into FY2, follow the four clinical rotations in order and finish at the end of foundation training.
Rotation 2.1
General Surgery
FY2 opens with surgery, COVID still in the background and a growing appetite for freedom, change and life beyond the ward.
Rotation 2.2
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery widens the world again through pressure, travel, privilege and the tension between a demanding career and everything outside it.
Rotation 2.3
Geriatric Medicine
Geriatrics turns attention towards toxicity, ageism, healing and the unexpected lessons that come from slowing down and looking more closely.
Rotation 2.4
Emergency Medicine
The final foundation rotation brings urgency, sacrifice and a crossroads, closing the book where the next stage of medicine begins.
Bookend
Open End of FY2
End of FY2
Foundation training ends with greater certainty about the doctor I have become - and a new crossroads about what comes next.
You treat a disease, you win, you lose.Dr Patch Adams Patch Adams
You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome...
The complete foundation-training journal
Take the journal with you.
Journal of a Junior Doctor follows both foundation years - from the shock of first responsibility to greater independence, shifting ambitions and the final decision about what came next.
Foundation training ended with certainty giving way to possibility.
Look back at the first two years in medicine, the career plan that did not survive them and the next chapter waiting beyond the foundation programme.
Finish with the Afterword.