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Doctors’ and lawyers’ eccentricity can border on farce; patients can be funny as well as sad; and the rigours of medical training and practice require means of escape and relief.
“I blame my mother. And my teddy bear. Well not really, but without those two I wouldn’t be writing this book…” begins an account of the journey of a British hospital doctor from childhood aspirations to practising consultant. Told in the first person, the book relates the narrator’s observations on people and events around him as he journeys through the turmoil of medical education, junior doctor training and consultancy. The interactions with patients, doctors, nurses, drug companies and lawyers are outrageously funny but sometimes tinged with bitter-sweetness and light-hearted cynicism.
The narrator includes anecdotes not only about hospital clinics and wards but also life as a medical student, emergency on call, visiting patients at home, research conferences abroad, the pharmaceutical industry and working in the USA. As an expert legal witness, he provides a witty insight into conferences with barristers, examination of cases in prison and attendance at court.
After “coming of age,” a period as medical student in Oxford is followed by junior hospital doctor posts in Oxford and Sheffield, UK. The appointment to consultancy in Sheffield is preceded by a two-year period as clinical and research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT, USA. The account of this period covers medical and non-medical experiences peculiar to the American life.
Close to the end of the book, Miss Sanderson sums it up: “I’m sure Doctor that, like me, you’ve been around doctors, hospitals, patients and all the rest that medicine has to offer long enough to know that sometimes, as far as your experience is concerned, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.”