“How can you work from home as a doctor?”

This is a question I’ve been getting a lot since I started my new job, so I thought it was time I explained exactly what I do on my non-clinical days.

I’m working as a Clinical Teaching Fellow this year, which means that I have one clinical day on the wards (AMU), two days a week teaching medical students, and the rest of my week is spent working for the Improvement Team of the hospital, which means I get to work from home.

So far I’m really enjoying the #WFH life, as it’s been a welcome break after my hectic FY2 rotations. I’ve mentioned previously that my work for the Improvement Team involves creating teaching resources and working on projects focusing on equality, diversity and inclusion, but what does this actually mean on a day to day basis, you ask? Well, allow me to elaborate!

At the moment, I’m working on a quality improvement project aiming to increase awareness of FY1 doctors in the Trust of where and how to report racist incidents and microaggressions they experience at work – I definitely got (and still get) a lot of these, but I found speaking up about them really overwhelming as an FY1. Being new to working as a doctor, and also being new to the Trust was quite intimidating, and it was made tougher by not knowing where or who to turn to for help, so this is something I want to improve for current FY1s, to be hopefully rolled out to other groups of staff. My Trust is now doing more to support staff when it comes to these issues, so one of my goals this year is to make the whole reporting/escalating process a lot easier and more straightforward.

Part of my work for the Improvement Team involves being a representative for foundation year/junior doctors in various board meetings; trust me, A LOT of meetings happen at executive level in the running of NHS Trusts. It’s been quite eye-opening to be part of these meetings, as they influence the day-to-day lives of staff in the hospital, but there is usually minimal representation of junior doctors. So my job is to bridge the gap between management and junior doctors, and I’ve been giving input on the practical aspects of proposed changes from things like discharge planning and discharge letters, to induction packages and team restructures, so that’s been very cool.

As for the creating resources part of my role, I am currently in the process of conducting interviews with staff across the Trust who comes from under-represented backgrounds. The exhibition we put together last month is part of an ongoing project to improve the experiences of staff who are minorities in the Trust. So these interviews will be used for training of line managers and supervisors, to help them better understand how they can offer more support to their colleagues and employees.

All of this work is linked closely to my role within the medical school, as I’m helping to develop bystander training and communication skills, so the eventual goal is to have the work we do with the students transferred across to train staff at the hospital, which is all very exciting.

So yeah, just a bit of insight into what I do when I’m working from home – I feel so blessed to have been given a year out of training to do a role I feel so passionate about, and I’ll definitely be updating on what we get done as the year progresses 😀

I’ve Been Feeling Stressed

And I think one thing I’m really bad at is admitting when I’m feeling overwhelmed, which then makes the stress worse, and I become snappy and not nice to be around. Not good. So I’m writing it here to be more open about how I’m feeling in the moment: I’ve been feeling low lately.

With new work pressures/expectations, as well as general life stuff, things have been feeling a bit much for me over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve been struggling. But I’m starting to feel better now, so here are some things that have helped:

1. Talking about it with people I can be open and 100% myself with.
2. Taking breaks from my phone – turns out being available all the time and constantly reading the news isn’t great for peace of mind.
3. Reading for fun again.
4. Watching TV to switch off for a bit – I recently started Downton Abbey, as well as binged Clickbait and the new season of Sex Education in the last week, just to give you an idea of how much ‘switching off’ I’ve needed.
5. Praying about it and reading my Bible more. I’ve been getting a lot of encouragement from John 14:27-29, and remembering the gift of peace that comes from Christ.

In other news, my first official project with the Improvement Team was launched last week, and it’s an exhibition celebrating diversity in the NHS. It includes portraits, paintings and sound clips of various staff members from various groups within the Trust, sharing their experiences of working in the area, information about their backgrounds, as well as how the pandemic has affected them.

The exhibition was put together in collaboration with the local art college, and will be on display for free to the public for the next month. I’ve been so honoured to be part of this project (organising it all has been super stressful but we got there in the end!), and I also got the chance to be photographed as well, which was so much fun:

Here’s to future projects with the team, and yay for celebrating diversity!

Junior Doctor Anecdotes: Accidentally Sending A Video to the Group Chat

You want to know the best way to make a lasting impression on your new work colleagues? Send a video of you and your flatmate doing karaoke to the WhatApp group that also includes Consultants… said no one, ever.

Yeah, so that was what I accidentally did last week.

Well I could have just deleted the message, right? That’s what I thought I did, until I realised that I’d clicked on the ‘Delete for me’ option, not ‘Delete for everyone,’ so the video is STILL in the chat and I’m the only one who can’t see it.

I am now Karaoke Girl. It is well.

(P.S – If anyone is curious, this is the song we were singing, hahahahaha – I guess all I can do is laugh about it now tbh).

My name is Taiwo and I am a Clinical Teaching Fellow

As promised, an update on my post F2 job:

I am now officially a week into my new role as a Clinical Teaching Fellow, and what a miracle job offer it was. You see, back in April, I was all set to accept a GP training job, but the Trust I’d done my F1 jobs in got in contact with me, and offered me this new role.

First, a bit of background information about the offer. Since last June, after the Black Lives Matter protests, speaking about my experiences as a black junior doctor, and being on BBC News talking about racism within the NHS, I started working informally with the Improvement Team at the hospital, helping them to create resources to educate staff and managers more about these issues.

This continued when I moved on to a new Trust for F2, even though I wasn’t technically employed by the hospital anymore, so I plucked up the courage to ask them for a formal paid role after F2, for me to be able to do even more for them.

It was a nerve-wracking process with a lot of back and forth and meetings with managers, the medical school leads, and even the Chief Executive, which was very intimidating at first but I held my ground…

They initially told me that there wasn’t enough funding for the role, which was why I applied for GP training and was all set to do that instead, until they got back to me a week before I was to confirm my GP offer, letting me know they’d found the money in the end. Like I said, a miracle job offer!

So my role is a brand new one and very exciting- I split my time between clinical work on AMU, teaching first and second year medical students, and working with the Improvement Team to create resources and projects around equality, diversity and inclusion (my focus will be on racism and microaggressions), really cool!

I’m so so excited for the year ahead and looking forward to hopefully getting involved in some research around health inequalities, as well as getting more time to relax because yay for no oncalls or nights or out of hours shifts for the next year 😄

On a more poignant note, a recent sudden bereavement has had me thinking a lot about the brevity of life, and how we shouldn’t take it for granted. Make sure you’re telling your loved ones how much you care about them, and what they mean to you as much as you can- you never know what tomorrow will bring.