I have been busy reading several medical memoir books.
THIS IS GOING TO HURT. Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by ADAM KAY
Paperback published by Picador
Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before a devastating experience on a ward caused him to reconsider his future. He kept a diary throughout his training, and This Is Going to Hurt intersperses tales from the front line of the NHS with reflections on the current crisis. The result is a first-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy, and a love letter to those who might at any moment be holding our lives in their hands.
What I found out by reading This Is Going To Hurt
I have full admiration for doctors working flat out to treat patents in hospital, the first page of the introduction Adam Kay explains. A study by the Department of Health in 2006 believed doctors were subject to annual appraisals. But the truth appears that doctors could quite happily go from the day they qualified until the day they retired without anyone checking they could still remember which end of the syringe goes into the patient. following the inquiry into that wicked man Harold Shipman case.
I didn’t know that Every doctor makes their career choice aged sixteen.
HOW TO TREAT PEOPLE A Nurse at Work by MOLLY CASE
Published in Hardback by Viking 19th April 2019
As a teenager, Molly Case underwent an operation that saved her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating room again—this time as a trainee nurse. She learns to care for her patients, sharing not only their pain, but also life- affirming moments of hope. In doing so, she offers a compelling account of the processes that keep them alive, from respiratory examinations to surgical prep. But when Molly’s father is admitted to the cardiac unit where she works, the professional and the personal suddenly collided.
This is what happened on Molly Case first day of working as a nurse
Molly Case explains in detail finding her granny dead and five years later she saw her second dead body on her first ward, on her first morning within her first hour of nurse training.
I too see my first dead body when I was serving tea and coffee, at a hospital, when no nurse informed me that a lady had died, there I stood talking to a dead lady asking her if she would like tea or coffee. I do think that a nurse could have informed me not to go to this lady as she had died.
THE LANGUAGE OF KINDNESS. A Nurse’s Story by CHRISTIE WATSON
Paperback published by Vintage
Christie Watson was a nurse for twenty years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness.
We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient’s agonising heart-lung transplant, and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.
One of my favourite chapters was Everything You Can Imagine is Real
There are four distinct training pathways to nursing in the UK, adult nursing, child nursing, mental – health and learning disability nursing. At 17, first day on the wards, Christie has learned about suicide and self harm and dementia care. Christie takes us through the steps of having to care for Derek who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is a serious illness that effects the way a person thinks. There are many more topics that Christie talks about. People and places have been changed in order to protect the privacy of patients and her Colleagues and situations have been merged to further protect identities.
THE PRISON DOCTOR. My time inside Britian’s most notorious jail
By DR AMANDA BROWN
Paperback published by HQ
Dr Amanda Brown has treated inmates in the UK’s most infamous prisons – first in young offenders’ institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe’s largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield. From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it all. In this memoir, Amanda reveals the stories, the patients and the cases that have shaped a career helping those most of us would rather forget.
An horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening stories of patients and the cases.
Dr Amanda Brown had worked in HMP Bronzefield, that was the largest female prison in Europe. Home to seventeen out of the twenty most dangerous women in the UK. Some of the high profile murderers have been locked up there. Serial killer Joanna Dennehy, Becky Watt’s killer Shauna Hoare, Mairead Philpott, who helped start a fire that killed six of her children and Rosemary West. Dr Amanda Brown was called to a cell with a woman having a baby. She also has worked at HMP Huntercombe where juveniles at the age 15-18 year-old are behind bars. From 2009 -2016 Dr Amanda Brown worked at the scrubs. A Code Blue was called the most serious and often life-threatening emergencies, that Dr Amanda Brown talks about. I have great admiration for Dr Amanda Brown at 64 she doesn’t pla to stop working , she plans only to stop working when she stops enjoying it.
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