Pre-registration house jobs were supposed to comprise twelve months working under close supervision whilst a decision was made whether the doctor should be allowed to work as an autonomous medical practitioner. In practice, it was unheard of that anyone should fail to move from provisional to full registration. My house jobs were due to end […]
Archive | Medicine
Bounded in a nutshell
It was a General Medical Council requirement that I should do surgical on-call whether I liked it or not. My main duties were at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, looking after patients admitted for elective surgery. No emergency work meant no on-call, so a bizarre arrangement was contrived in order to satisfy the GMC. One night […]
Graduation Day
The last year at medical school was marked by a gathering sense of dread as Finals approached. Although we had had innumerable tests over the years, these were just way marks. Qualification rested entirely on the results of a heavy schedule of written and viva voce exams taken in late May and early June, and […]
The Northern Line Part 1. The Spider Club
By Catherine Robinson on 1st November 2021 in 1975, Alcohol, Class, Hospitals, Junior Doctors, Medical School, Medical Values, Medicine, Social Mobility
Between 1733 and 1980, St George’s Hospital and its medical school were located at Hyde Park Corner, one of the best sites in Belgravia. The building was grand but neglected. In 1980, just before I sat medical school finals, we were allocated our pre-registration house jobs. I was not looking forward to working as a […]
Hospital porter Part 6: How to cheat at cards
Looking back, my strategy to get into medical school was naive. I would probably have done better if I had engaged the skills that underpinned my flair for cheating at cards. Second time around I applied to five medical schools whose prospectuses seemed to convey liberal social attitudes. This included two London medical schools, both […]