Over the last couple of months I’ve had the chance to experience life as a patient because of various hospital referrals and investigations. From bloods, to ultrasound, to xrays and endoscopy, your gal has had quite a lot going on, and so far I’m all good, so I’m grateful to God for that.
It’s all made me very reflective about life and how short it is, so as cliché as it sounds, it’s so important to make the most of each day because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.
Also, long live the NHS.
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.
Life As A Junior Doctor 