Scan barcode
A review by helene0707
Your Life In My Hands - a Junior Doctor's Story by Rachel Clarke
4.0
Let's start this review by confirming that the blurb is, in fact, misleading. What Rachel Clarke has written is an account of her years as a junior doctor, but it also includes anecdotes and commentary from her work as a journalist. Due to her unique background, Clarke produced a very different book to all the other accounts written by doctors, nurses, etc. There are political comments in this book, but they do serve a purpose.
The NHS is often seen as a bulwark of British medicine--untouchable, inerrant, and for some, even holy. We have listened to politicians, telling us how great the service is, how perfect, and how many patient lives are saved daily. But these announcements fail to tackle the one thing nobody can even begin to comprehend unless they work for the NHS: the institution is severely underfunded.
What does it mean that the British health services have no money? It means that patients are not admitted to the ER, even if they are choking, that children are left with high fevers when they are clearly having an infection, that cancer patients turn up to their chemotherapy and do not know whether there actually is a seat for them on that day. Patients with complicated illnesses have to travel overseas and place their lives into the hands of foreign countries.
Clarke provides a harrowing account of the life on the frontline, one that almost made her quit the profession. Constant underfunding, overtime, and even nagging was too much to handle for an ambitious junior doctor like her. The example cases she describes are emphasized by the lack of funding in the NHS and show a truly frightening picture that so many people will eventually face in their lifetime. After all, what will you do when your scheduled chemotherapy keeps getting cancelled until the metastasis spreads again?
This book resonated with me. I grew up in a country where healthcare had an incredibly high standard. I was first amazed at the GP offices from the seventies in the UK, and then confused when I could not go to a free gynaecologist when I had spent my teenage years going to special practices and doctors, and all of that completely free. Some people in the UK have not even heard of a urologist.
I understand why some reviewers voted this book low, but they did that because they had been misled by the blurb. Clarke's work is by no means a bad book. It just is not what some readers had expected.
The NHS is often seen as a bulwark of British medicine--untouchable, inerrant, and for some, even holy. We have listened to politicians, telling us how great the service is, how perfect, and how many patient lives are saved daily. But these announcements fail to tackle the one thing nobody can even begin to comprehend unless they work for the NHS: the institution is severely underfunded.
What does it mean that the British health services have no money? It means that patients are not admitted to the ER, even if they are choking, that children are left with high fevers when they are clearly having an infection, that cancer patients turn up to their chemotherapy and do not know whether there actually is a seat for them on that day. Patients with complicated illnesses have to travel overseas and place their lives into the hands of foreign countries.
Clarke provides a harrowing account of the life on the frontline, one that almost made her quit the profession. Constant underfunding, overtime, and even nagging was too much to handle for an ambitious junior doctor like her. The example cases she describes are emphasized by the lack of funding in the NHS and show a truly frightening picture that so many people will eventually face in their lifetime. After all, what will you do when your scheduled chemotherapy keeps getting cancelled until the metastasis spreads again?
This book resonated with me. I grew up in a country where healthcare had an incredibly high standard. I was first amazed at the GP offices from the seventies in the UK, and then confused when I could not go to a free gynaecologist when I had spent my teenage years going to special practices and doctors, and all of that completely free. Some people in the UK have not even heard of a urologist.
I understand why some reviewers voted this book low, but they did that because they had been misled by the blurb. Clarke's work is by no means a bad book. It just is not what some readers had expected.