As the spring of 1981 arrived, the end of my general surgery ordeal came into sight. My spirits lifted, because the second three months of my surgical house job was to be in orthopaedics, which I expected to be dull but civilised. Easter fell at the beginning of April, and it included Steve Hammond’s birthday. […]
Archive | surgery
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 […]
A cut-and-shut affair
By Catherine Robinson on 26th October 2022 in Hospitals, Junior Doctors, Medical Values, surgery, Uncategorised
Lanesborough House, the historic St George’s building at Hyde Park Corner, closed suddenly in 1980 when its state of disrepair became a danger to the public. The new hospital was not yet finished, so the consultants had to temporarily occupy Victorian wards in Tooting that were awaiting demolition. I did my surgical house job in […]
Freedom for Tooting Part 1: The second worst job
I started the undergraduate clinical course at St George’s in September 1977, which necessitated a sensible haircut and the purchase of a tie. My grandmother bought me a stethoscope. We were provided with white coats that were the right size for nobody. Doctors’ ties and white coats were already known to be common vectors for […]