Bookend
Open Start of BST 2
Start of BST 2
A second year of specialist training begins with greater responsibility, higher expectations and much less room to hide behind being new.
BST Year 2 · 2024–2025
BST Year 2
Learning through adversity
Progress is rarely a straight line.
BST Year 2 began with more experience, more responsibility and the expectation that difficult decisions would increasingly become my own. Confidence grew, but so did the consequences of getting things wrong.
Across four quarters, these entries follow setbacks, travel, relationships, difficult lessons and hard-earned progress - both inside emergency medicine and beyond it.
II
Second specialist-training year
2024–2025
The completed second training year
27
Journal entries
4
Quarters
Read BST Year 2
Four quarters. One second year in emergency medicine.
Begin at the start of BST 2, follow the year quarter by quarter and finish where the second specialist-training year closes.
Quarter 1
Q1
The year opens in the deep end, balancing medicine with travel, new responsibilities and the uncomfortable experience of falling short.
Quarter 2
Q2
Jordan, love and Albania sit alongside the ordinary repetition of work, ending with a midpoint check-in on what BST 2 has become.
Quarter 3
Q3
Mountains, summer and the third decade bring a steadier stretch of the year, with equilibrium interrupted by the discovery of another secret club.
Quarter 4
Q4
Loose ends, fallibility and Ecuador bring the year towards its close, tying together what changed and what remains unfinished.
Bookend
Open End of BST 2
End of BST 2
The second specialist-training year closes with more experience, more perspective and the next stage of emergency medicine already beginning.
Although the world is full of suffering,Helen Keller
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
The complete journal
Take the journal with you.
Read the full story of two years of Basic Specialist Training in emergency medicine - from the uncertainty of BST Year I to the harder decisions, growing independence and lessons that followed in BST Year II.
Every purchase also helps support the continued maintenance of The Roving Doctor and the stories still waiting to be written.
BST Year II ends here, but the reflection continues beyond the final entry.
Continue to the Afterword for one last look back at the journey, what changed along the way and what came next.
Continue to the Afterword.