This timely, passionately argued book made for a challenging read, exploring and exposing many of the more difficult aspects of doctors’ lives. Caroline Elton is a psychologist whose experience leading the Careers Unit for trainees in London has given her insights that she now shares, hoping to show that ‘doctors are people too’. One trainee crashes her car twice, so desperate is she to escape the hospital where she is treating patients with the disease that killed her father, and another is baffled by the lack of empathy from other obstetricians to her failed fertility treatment. The cases come thick and fast, covering such a variety of situations that I suspect all doctors will find a topic that resonates personally. I know I did.
The discussions framed by the cases address many important issues in medicine. Written before Dr Bawa-Garba’s plight hit the headlines, this book contains a prescient exploration of discrimination in medicine and the difficult conditions within which many junior doctors work. Although many of the points are raised without solutions, the author does suggest some potential approaches, such as looking to the trainee intern year in New Zealand to provide a model for transition between medical school and foundation years.
Overall, I would have found this book more readable with tighter editing and fewer stories simply resolved by doctors leaving medicine, but that should not detract from the importance of what Elton has to say. Non-medics may approach this book with fascination, yet for those of us already intimately familiar with the medical world I would suggest approaching it with some trepidation and a good friend to talk with about the issues it raises. Whether or not you agree with Elton’s observations and arguments, all of them give opportunities to reflect on the habitually dismissed consequences of doctors also being human. Now we need to start doing something about them!