Apart from the frequent and unnecessary use of a very foul adjective not appropriate for polite company, this is the hilarious and in places very serious account of the training and trained obstetrician/gynecologist’s experiences within Britain’s NHS in the 2000s. Burnt out by criticism from the public and particularly by politicians who fail to understand the dedication, the highs and the lows and the frustrations that all of us in medicine have experienced, he quit the profession, in 2010 and went into television production (and writing.).
Although his specialty was very different than mine there are enough similarities to make this an easy to understand book, and the technical details are adequately explained in abundant footnotes for the general public.
Of many, I can relate some stories like the ones he writes about.
#1. Dashing down the corridor to the operating room for an emergency Caesarian section with my hand up a lady’s vagina to push the baby’s head off the prolapsed cord.
#2. Attempting and failing to retrieve a foreign body (in my case a beer bottle) from a rectum. When we gave up the note of referral to the surgeon read « This Bud’s for you. ».
#3. Sleep deprivation. After being on call in house for 72 hours and getting almost no sleep I did early morning rounds with the head nurse and, noting an empty bed, asked what had happened to old Joe. She laughed and stated « According to the night nurse, you came over here four hours ago and declared him dead. ». I had no recall whatsoever of doing so. I can only hope that I was not mistaken on that occasion.
I can also relate to the many occasions when I was off duty (and now am peranantly) and asked to give advice about the illness of a relative or friend.
I greatly enjoyed this book, now a T.V. series.
4/5
Thanks, Tony
The Passionate Reader 