Dr Rob Hendry - Medical Protection Society

26
REVIEWS
UNITED KINGDOM CASEBOOK | VOLUME 19 | ISSUE 1 | JANUARY 2011 www.mps.org.uk
Reviews
Sick Notes - True Stories from
the Front Lines of Medicine
by Dr Tony Copperfield
(£8.99, Monday Books, 2010) Reviewed by Sian Barton,
freelance journalist and patient, Milton Keynes
I must confess – I’m a patient. So
after peering through the illustrious Dr
Tony Copperfield’s window into the
working life of a GP, my initial feelings
were paranoia. Dr Copperfield
outlines the worst aspects of his
beloved patients and leaves the lay
reader asking the following questions:
am I a dreaded heartsink? Is taking in
a list really so awful? Do all heartsink
patients suffer the same fate as poor
old Mr Nickelby – who repeatedly
visits for a buzzing in his ear’ole and
(finally) ends up with a diagnosis of
terminal cancer?
But then if I think being a patient
is hard, I should try being a GP. In
between wading through the worried
well, antibiotics addicts and elderly sex
Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story
by Gabriel Weston
(£7.99, CCV Digital, 2009) Reviewed by Dr June
Tay, junior doctor in anaesthetics, London
Direct Red is a concise, easyto-read
book that provides an
insight into the life of a surgical
trainee working in the UK. Gabriel
Weston is an ENT surgeon who
writes about the highs and lows
of her career with brutal honesty,
painting a realistic picture of
her chosen profession.
She divides her book into different
themes, using semi-fictional events.
The book begins with her
experiences as a medical student – her
first male catheterisation, the human
skeleton she owned, the first cardiac
arrest she witnessed. Later, she
touches on her struggles as a registrar,
honing in on how she found it tough
making her mark in a competitive field
dominated by male counterparts.
Weston dissects the raw details
of what goes on behind the
doors of an operating theatre,
revealing its gruesome nature to
her audience. Surgery may be a
noble profession, but it is far from
flawless, as Weston describes
maniacs desperate
for free Viagra,
GPs have to unpick
some serious
problems for their
patients.
As befitting
a medical writer of the year, Dr
Copperfield (who is actually the
pseudo-real creation of two medical
practitioners) offers a wry insight
into the daily struggles GPs in the
UK’s public health system face in an
interesting and enlightening way.
However, I learnt that patients are
not the only obstacles GPs have to
jump over in order to do their job.
Dr Copperfield casts a sharp eye on
the system itself. There are some
horrible examples of health service
bureaucracy going spectacularly
wrong. The case of the seriously ill
woman who is expected to wait five
months to see a specialist is mind-
when she discharged a patient that
should have been admitted out
of a desire to prove her worth.
She uses descriptive words in
a poetic manner, likening bowels
to a “snaking mass, writhing” and
“vermiculating in our joint embrace”.
She does not spare any details,
describing how after assisting
in theatre, her underwear was
“soaked with (a) woman’s blood”,
or when she reduced a middleaged
woman's haemorrhoids.
My favourite excerpt from the
book is the touching story about
Ben, a ten-year-old boy who was
admitted with a headache and later
diagnosed with a brain tumour.
Weston was called to see Ben in the
middle of the night because he was
in pain: she prescribed painkillers.
A few days later, she found out that
he passed away; it then dawned
on her that the last thing a sick
child who cries out at night wants
is medication. He needed another
person’s warmth and comfort.
Although this story did not have
a happy ending, I identified closely
with her thoughts and actions. I was
struck by how the routine demands
boggling, especially when our dutiful
doctor rings to complain and it is
pushed forward by just 30 minutes.
Thankfully it isn’t all doom and
gloom – Dr Copperfield does help
his patients. The book is human, very
funny, wise and, in some instances,
heart-warming, and it’s nice to see how
it works using the eyes of an expert.
It is good to read something in print
with an insightful comedy take on the
workings of the UK health system,
and certainly beats some of the
depressing and histrionic reports that
pepper the papers. Because looking
at Dr Copperfield’s assessment of the
situation, if you didn’t laugh, then you
would surely cry.
of night calls can make one less
compassionate and empathic, and
more impatient and self-centered.
This will serve as a constant
reminder of why we should have
patients’ best interests at heart in all
situations. Her writing also opens an
emotional window into a surgeon’s
life: how despite our daily exposure
to death, that we too have feelings.
As a junior doctor, Weston's
anecdotes resonate closely with
my own experiences that surgery
does not always end in success.
One example is “Mr Cooke”, who
comes in with a leaking aneurysm
and dies on the operating table,
denied his last moments of liberty.
Often we think surgery is the best
option, but a good surgeon knows
when not to make the cut.
I would have preferred the characters
and plot to be better developed as, at
times, both seem to take a backseat
to the anecdotes. The last few
chapters would perhaps benefit from
further editing, as some sentences
were lengthy and difficult to follow.
On the whole, it is a delightful and
valuable read for both medical and
non-medical professionals alike.