If there are such things as retrospective anxiety attacks, then I have just had another. I am talking about sudden flashbacks, often of close shaves, where the memories momentarily send shivers of anxiety down one’s spine. So, occasionally, I will get a flashback to that moment when, as a teenager, I am clinging to a ... Read More »

On the virtues of silence.  ... Read More »

I gave notice to leave my GP partnership on 31 st March 2011.  
It is fair to say that my partners were rendered speechless as they had not anticipated my leaving in any way.   I had not fallen out with anyone and neither had there been any dramatic event or disaster to account for my decision.   I ... Read More »

This article takes a look at the Foundation Programme application process – a system which will leave many readers questioning how doctors can be selected for jobs by a process which involves no interviews, no standardised exams, and the only test of their language skills being a tick in a box marked ‘acceptable’ by a referee who is chosen by the applicant themselves. Also a system which leaves many good doctors feeling undervalued and sent to areas of the country and jobs that they do not wish to go to, and leads to many questioning whether to stay in the NHS or in medicine at all.  The FP needs to remember that they are not just dealing with a number to be allocated somewhere to fill a gap in the service, but dealing with the lives of real people who are being recruited to a job which deals with the lives of real people!

 ... Read More »

Hi.   My name is Dr Anita Goraya and I am a GP.   I am a doctor –thus it was, is now.....   and shall be evermore?
  This thought has, at various times in my career, been alternately a solace and a vexation, a personal identity and a carapace.   I’ve been a GP for 15 years and a ... Read More »

Surgeon. Check. Two nurses. Check. Anaesthetist. Check. Two radiographers. Check. OR booked. Check. Post-op bed booked. Check. Patient…   My work experience with a pain management surgeon was meant to involve watching the implantation of a spinal cord stimulator (so add to the checklist one specialist from the ... Read More »

It was going to be a difficult week – or so I was told. Our niece, now 16, was coming to stay with us in France. It involved quite a complicated journey and beforehand there were endless texts and phone calls from her Dad (her parents are divorced) to check everything was allright. Finally I spoke with Anna herself. ... Read More »

About a year ago, I entered an essay competition on doc2doc where we were asked to describe our most memorable holiday. I wrote about my pilgrimage to Crete to see where my then recently deceased uncle had fought with the Australian Army during the war.
The prize was four days in one of the “Small Luxury Hotels ... Read More »

By their very nature the last words people utter carry a very special significance. To those who are close, they can bring solace or can engender guilt and anxiety, but whichever, they are likely to linger indefinitely. They somehow encapsulate our memories of the dead person, even becoming a sort of personification. And ... Read More »

How conduct and values have changed! I was a young doctor and the consultant asked me to teach first-year medical students. The topic was, “How to examine the chest?” and the date – probably the early 1970s. The memory of the event is excruciating. The patient I chose for the demonstration was a ... Read More »