If we asked retiring doctors to look back over their careers to determine who or what had the most significant influence on their medical education, what do we think they would come up with? I expect that the most likely answers would be previous consultants and senior doctors, textbooks and teaching sessions, and experiences with memorable patients. Would anyone mention the doctors' mess?
The doctors' mess is an ever changing resource that updates itself continuously
The doctors' mess has always been associated with junior doctors hiding from work or eating their lunches. It is often a drab room, with the same facilities—usually a pool table, a drinks machine, and sometimes nowadays a computer, sofas (falling to pieces), and a satellite television (if you are lucky). The papers come every day, and most readers want the tabloids but pretend to be happy with the broadsheets. The washing up is never done by the doctors: either someone is employed who does it as part of their cleaning duties or it just isn't done. There is no panic if food or drink is spilled—no one worries about getting the stains out, and generally a solid rub into the carpet will do the trick.
There is, however, one other thing in every mess: doctors. The mess has always been a major point of social interaction for doctors. They come to talk about other staff they like or dislike, football, going out at the weekend, and, sometimes, politics. Something talked about probably more than anything else is medicine and all that relates to it. I know that when we were preregistration house officers my colleagues and I spent as much time as we could in the mess trying to be friendly with the senior house officers and registrars and asking them questions and being asked questions.
As my career progressed I found myself asking senior doctors in the mess about interview techniques, CVs, and which jobs to go for. I would also ask about difficult cases I had or aspects of a subject I didn't understand—“If you had a patient with low sodium what would you do?”—and so on. I can look back with fond memories on how I learned how to deal with chest pain, asthma, and other common illnesses, often in the mess with a registrar teaching me informally, maybe while watching the golf on television or playing pool. I recall talking with registrars about the membership examination of the Royal College of Physicians and various ways to learn for it and to pass it.
Figure 1.
I realised recently what an unsung resource the doctors' mess is—more accessible and easier to understand than a textbook, and definitely cheaper (£5 to £10 a month seems the going rate), and perhaps more approachable and available than a consultant. It is an ever changing resource that updates itself continuously. Now, as a specialist registrar I ask the other registrars about management in their specialty—“What happens to all these subarachnoid haemorrhages we refer to you neurosurgeons? Do all the patients get an operation, or what?” But more importantly I now find myself being asked the questions I used to ask: questions about ward management and about careers by the preregistration house officers and questions about the MRCP examination by the senior house officers. I congratulate people who use the mess in this way, probably without their realising it, and unreservedly recommend it to those who don't. It isn't just a dirty place at the end of the hospital.