Clarke may well be up for another award for this disturbing insider account of the NHS during the pandemic . . . she recognises the power of individual stories -- Vanessa Berridge ― Express

In the Sunday Times best-selling Your Life in My Hands, Rachel depicts life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. A heartfelt, deeply personal memoir that is both a powerful polemic on the degradation of Britain's most vital public institution and a love letter of hope and optimism to that same health service.Clarke, who comes from four generations of doctors, is a skilful writer and her passion for her profession shines through the many personal, moving and unsettling stories of life on the front line. One patient with cancer is told with extraordinary tenderness that she is going to die; another makes an astonishing recovery when all seemed futile. And there is a very intimate description of death itself. My times are in your hand: deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from them that persecute me. This shows that medicine can never operate efficiently on an individual level; it takes a well-organised and system to keep the profession going. While individual healthcare workers often enter the profession with the best intentions at heart, their idealism can soon be crushed by the weight of responsibility in underfunded, understaffed hospitals, where speaking up to seniority is equated with blatant disrespect. This culture of silence, compliance and submission that seems to be a subsidiary trait of the hierarchical nature of medicine only perpetuated the establishment of an increasingly brutal culture, where patients can no longer receive quality care. The Health of the Medical Workforce Thank you to Rebecca Fincham (Bigmouth Presents Book events) and also Metro Publishing (John Blake Books) for the advanced review copy of Your Life in My Hands.

Clarke is a superb storyteller as well as a clear-eyed polemicist . . . she writes with such compassion and humanity that you feel you are in the room . . . Clarke is certainly on the side of the angels and she has produced much more than a snapshot. Breathtaking is a beautiful, blistering account of a key moment in our history. If I were Boris Johnson, I wouldn't want to read it -- Christina Patterson ― Sunday Times Clarke has written the UK's human story of Covid. Weaving together stories of patients, families, nurses, doctors and paramedics as the virus spread from New Year's Day to the end of April 2020. She reveals the desperate times and the government's mistakes but also how people from all walks of life - inside the NHS and out - have tried to reach out and show goodness to one another ― Stylist Powerful, uplifting and even reassuring . . . Clarke's tone is more intimate, much of the book written at night when she couldn't sleep for fear, fury and frustration - the last two she attributes largely to the inadequacies and lies of politicians. Rage lurks beneath many paragraphs as she lambasts the delays in decisions, and the "number theatre" of statistics. You get the sense of someone trying to remain calm and reasoned, often on the verge of being overcome . . . superb -- Madeleine Bunting ― GuardianA searing insider's account of being a doctor during the tsunami of coronavirus deaths . . . It says everything about her character that Clarke refuses to settle for despair, focusing on the human decency she has seen ― Independent Breathtaking is a scorching corrective to any suggestion that the pandemic is a hoax and that empty hospital corridors imply deserted intensive care units . . . Written at pace as "a kind of nocturnal therapy" on sleepless nights, Clarke's book has all the rawness of someone still working in the eye of the storm ― Mirror

Many always dream of being a nurse or a doctor specialising in specific areas of medicine, but no-one prepares you for the real life on the front line that is looking after patients and dealing with the most traumatic moments that only a doctor can experience. Every patient is different, not every patient is understanding some can be rather rude. We ask a lot of doctors and what they have to except. Rachel’s accounts in her book are very eloquent and her writing style means that she comes across as though she there with you talking directly you. Just like a doctor in fact. My times are in thy hand: Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.Your Life in My Hands is at once a powerful polemic on the systematic degradation of Britain’s most vital public institution, and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service and those who support it. This extraordinary memoir offers a glimpse into a life spent between the operating room and the bedside, the mortuary and the doctors' mess, telling powerful truths about today’s NHS frontline, and capturing with tenderness and humanity the highs and lows of a new doctor’s first steps onto the wards in the context of a health service at breaking point - and what it means to be entrusted with carrying another’s life in your hands. I love how Clarke reminisces the years of her childhood and youth, when her father would bring the entire family to visit his patients at the cottage hospital where he worked. Such an act of compassion filled the wards with a palpable warmth and was especially uplifting for patients who had been forsaken by their families. Her father’s temperament and compassion towards his patients became a guiding beacon for Clarke’s own journey into medicine. I truly admire Clarke’s patient-centred approach to her work and like her, I aspire to be a doctor who can make patients feel loved and understood. Conjunctive waw, Preposition-m | Verb - Qal - Participle - masculine plural construct | first person common singular

In the long run, without proper measures to ease the burden on overstretched doctors, patient care will be severely compromised. Not only that, doctors and nurses can succumb to mental health problems precipitated by stress, anxiety and guilt at not being able to deliver the quality of care that their patients deserve. While it is no fault of the individual, it can seem to some doctors like a personal failure. I am a junior doctor. It is 4 a.m. I have run arrest calls, treated life-threatening bleeding, held the hand of a young woman dying of cancer, scuttled down miles of dim corridors wanting to sob with sheer exhaustion, forgotten to eat, forgotten to drink, drawn on every fibre of strength that I possess to keep my patients safe from harm.’ Firstly the narrator cannot pronounce words such as telephonist and Agence France Presse, amongst countless others. Her voice has an annoying patronising tone. The writer tries to paint herself as struggling to pay herself through med school, neglecting to be honest about being married to a fighter pilot at the time. This isn't a poor single woman modestly paying her way. She's the third generation of a well to do medical family with ample support and funds. That's fine but don't paint a picture that is different from the reality of a privileged public school girl, immersed in the medical world from birth, who was fortunate enough to have husband and family to support her to become a doctor after a brief career in journalism. While the political aspects of the junior doctor dispute are riveting and enlightening, the parts of the book that left the deepest impression on me are those in which Clarke recounts the human experiences that have continuously reinforced her faith in medicine and its healing power. It is a well-known fact, referred to in Rachel Clarke’s eloquent and moving account of her life as a junior doctor, that candidates at interviews for medical school should never say that they want to help people. Instead, you must use a code — talk about wanting to make a difference, or of finding medicine and disease fascinating, or your love of using your hands.

The declining health of our loved ones is a predicament that none of us want to face. Knowing that there will always be a system in place to take care of them is a comforting assurance. Therefore, continuing to uphold the values of the NHS while not subjecting its workers to further stress will provide the crucial anchorage for a better future. Who would I recommend this book to? Since his days are determined and the number of his months is with You, and since You have set limits that he cannot exceed, The goodwill and kindness without which the NHS will not survive are being inexorably squeezed out by underfunding, understaffing and the ever more unrealistic demands placed upon a floundering workforce. I hope sincerely that the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt has read Rachel Clarke’s passionate memoir but I doubt it. I am passionate about our NHS and the heroes that work in the NHS. I cannot praise Your Life in My Hands high enough. It you care about the future of the NHS then this is a book you must read. To Rachel Clarke I say thank you for writing this important book that in years to come may yet be a book every junior doctor will want to read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. While I am personally not inclined to take any sides in such conflicts without a more complete understanding of the situation, I am nevertheless appalled by the Health Secretary’s avoidance of frank conversations with the people whom his policies will most directly affect. The unjust connotations that made the lapse in patient safety seem like the fault of junior doctors were also deeply disturbing.