Your Life In My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story

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Absalom was looked for daily to "pass over Jordan, and all the men of Israel with him" ( 2 Samuel 17:24). 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.

Throughout the book, Clarke makes striking associations between her own encounters and those at Mid Staffs, beginning with the death of her grandfather, who suffered a fatal fall as he was unable to get help from the hospital staff to use the bathroom. I approached it with caution, having grown to dread the daily diet of misery which is life in Covidland. 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. I regarded myself as reasonably empathetic and thought I could imagine what grieving must feel like. The very fact that doctors would abandon their patients to go on strike was enough to highlight their desperation and fierce opposition towards the proposed contractual changes.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. My times are in Your hands; Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from those who pursue and persecute me.

This didn’t, however, prepare her for the stress, exhaustion and exhilaration of working as a junior doctor in a health service bursting at the seams.In the end, it boiled down to a battle of words, of who could better manipulate facts and statistics to serve their interests. The vision of the NHS is awe-inspiring, yet, sadly, it has been increasingly besieged by policies that contradict its founding principles. The course of my life is in your power; rescue me from the power of my enemies and from my persecutors.

Yet, when she finally emerged as a junior doctor at over thirty years of age and entered into the profession she had pursued with fervour, she became disillusioned by the punishing workload and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s unjust accusations towards junior doctors for failing to deliver an exemplary standard of care and a seven-day NHS. 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. When patients rampage through the doors of the hospital but are left to wait for hours on end, the agony manifests on both sides. Breathtaking is a scorching corrective to any suggestion that the pandemic is a hoax and that empty hospital corridors imply deserted intensive care units .Her leap from journalism into medicine was influenced by her parents’ background in medicine, as well as the irresistible allure of caring for patients through some of the toughest ordeals of their lives. While this has been dismissed by some as an isolated case, it is in fact a microcosm of widespread failings in the entire health service.

Rage lurks beneath many paragraphs as she lambasts the delays in decisions, and the "number theatre" of statistics. Such a publicly funded system ensures that anyone ill enough to need medical treatment shall not be left to suffer in silence simply because they cannot afford the exorbitant fees.

Over time, such irrational expectations will take a toll on frontline health workers, who are the backbone of the NHS. My times are in thy hand: Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? You get the sense of someone trying to remain calm and reasoned, often on the verge of being overcome .