A candid medical memoir on feedback, ED training, low pay, night shifts, burnout, responsibility and the brutal reality behind emergency medicine.
Candy & Blood
A raw pre-hospital medicine account of a capsized migrant boat, mass-casualty response, hypothermia, helplessness and the adrenaline of emergency work.
Divergence
A trauma case forces me to step back into the world I left behind and accept, finally, the career I chose instead.
FOREWORD
A journey through ambition, burnout, and rediscovery as a doctor steps away from medicine to rebuild identity, purpose, and a fuller life.
AFTERWORD
AFTERWORD After finishing this journal, I’ve once again come to realise just how much I’ve changed over the previous two years. I walked into medicine thinking I’d be doing it for myself – it was my one true passion, and furthering my knowledge was my main driver. It only took a few weeks for all that to change. As passionate […]
END OF FY 2
END OF FY II Blink once, five years of med school over. Blink again, and suddenly, two years go by. Just like that, I had finished the two years of the Foundation Programme. With my e-portfolio complete and my End of Year reports fully satisfactory, I was now a fully warranted, full-fledged doctor. Up until that point, the title I […]
Crossroads
II.IV.V CROSSROADS That’s how it went for the rest of the rotation. Work hard, work harder – no time for play. But I was fine with that. It’d be over soon enough anyway. At that point, I had my future all mapped out. I was hoping to pass my exam so that by the time I finished my Foundation Programme, […]
Floating
II.II.VI FLOATING As time went by, our situation in the neurosurgical department improved somewhat. Whereas before it was us house officers and a single higher specialist trainee (HST) keeping the department running, we now had two shiny, brand-new HSTs – Gary and Bob. Having only just started, they weren’t quite exceptional yet, but at least they managed to offload some […]
Heaven
II.I.IV HEAVEN 2021 was quite the dark and grim year for me. Apart from the countless dead bodies I had certified on the job, entire branches of our family tree seemed to be dropping at any point in time. And somehow, throughout my three months in Gozo, this only seemed to escalate. Over the previous year, we had lost our […]