Doctor Diaries: Why did I leave?
I would like to start out by saying that I didn't intend to leave, I was just having a break. I have always been a bit of a roamer and when things get monotonous or unbearable I take a working holiday. This has led me to having some very interesting career experiences. As a Health care professional I have worked in Uganda (a few times), Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, New Zealand and lots of places around the UK.
As I worked in the NHS, the hours got longer and whilst I was single this didn’t bother me. I preferred the emergency department with its quick turnover of patients. My job was to identify a problem/solve a puzzle, initiate treatment and move the patient to where they needed to be for that treatment to work. Most shifts started from 2pm at 2 hour intervals and lasted (apparently) 8 hours. So week one would be 2-10, week two 4-midnight etc on a rolling rota that saw me on 9-5 one week in 6 and those were the only weeks that could be taken as holiday. Once I got married, this was untenable as my husband is in a 9-5 job so I would only spend time with him once every 6 weeks including weekends which are the busiest time in ED. So instead of following my ED career pathway I switched to GP thinking at least I would be home evenings and weekends.
My husband has been super supportive during my training, never moaning about my long hours in hospital jobs or the exhausted person who only came home to eat and sleep before going out to do it all again the next day. One Christmas he even brought pizza to the doctor’s mess, sat and ate it with me, hanging around whilst I answered multiple bleeps until I had finally been in the room long enough to eat three slices before he went home.
These were the days when I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat and often did. One hospital where I was working in the ED was a 45 minute drive home and I just couldn’t make it, it didn’t matter what time of day my shift ended. I would start the drive thinking this would be the day i made it straight home and without fail, halfway home, by the time i reached the same layby my eyes would be closing and i would be a danger behind the wheel of a car. I would pull over into this layby and fall asleep for 40 minutes…..every shift….then wake up and drive the rest of the way home refreshed enough to not fall asleep again until i got there. The fatigue was so relentless that sometimes on pulling into the layby I would get the gears into neutral and the handbrake on but fall asleep before I managed to turn the engine off and lock the doors. I spent several years like this.
So I chose GP training with my eyes on the prize of what I thought would be a normal work day, home for dinner. I still had to do several more years of training as I would for any consultant level position but there would be an end. I also thought this would be the closest specialty to ED, quick turnover of patients during the day, a variety of conditions to treat, some emergencies, some less so. What I hadn't realised is just how hard GP is. Gone are the days when I would be expected to know something about everything. With the advent of the internet I now have to know everything about everything and there is no flexibility from the patient if I don't. There doesn’t seem to be an understanding that if I knew as much about a specialty as a consultant of that discipline then I would be them and they spend their training years solely in their field of expertise, how could i possibly have done that for all specialties.
When I finally qualified and got to work, GP was already in crisis with too few GPs for the nation. There wasn’t much acceptance of it at that stage and I am not convinced there is any more now. The right wing governments have consistently underfunded General Practice and it does 90% of the NHS work for 8% of the budget, it used to have 10%, they use the right wing media to consistently barrage GP with insults and accusations of laziness and greed. By the time I was broken I was working 12-14 hours 6 days a week and had not had a single day of sickness or annual leave in over a year. I did this for the same salary as a Member of Parliament.
During this time I became difficult to live with, always tired and angry, my poor husband just tried to tread gently around me but it definitely got to him. I became so burnt out that I had decided the only way for this to end was to end my own life and knew exactly how I was going to do it. My husband then became ill and I woke up to what was happening, I never actually wanted to die I just didn't want to live like this. I decided it would be a good idea to apply to work in Canada and over the next year and a half jumped through all of the necessary hoops to become registered. We took a trip to British Columbia and Ontario as these were the two states where I wouldn’t have to sit exams to work and we decided to move to Victoria Island. When I finally got the email that said I had been accepted we had a mini celebration……then I asked how long from this point until I could move over and was told about another 6 months. I was truly broken by this stage and hanging on by my fingernails, I couldn’t do it, I couldn't hang on for another 6 months.
It was a miraculous intervention right then that my antipodean cousin messaged me and asked if I would like to go to New Zealand for a few months so we could catch up. Cousin knew of a local GP who was looking for someone to cover a maternity leave for 3 months. I looked at my husband who shrugged and I applied. It took 3 weeks to get the job organised with a zoom interview, get a visa and get on a plane, I had a reprieve.
Why did I choose to write about this? Because I am so grateful for this opportunity, I truly believe that it saved me, suicide in UK GPs is 4 times higher than the general population. The hatred of GPs has increased in my time away from the UK, the government has successfully used the media to turn the general population and they have passed all the laws necessary to privatise the health service, this is their ultimate goal. The British population in general are either unaware or don’t care. My mum, when she was a small child, remembers her mother having to pay half a crown to see the Doctor. Health care has been free, no-one pays anything to see a GP in the UK, for an entire generation (almost 2) and this seems to have dulled peoples understanding to what they actually have access.
I will end this here for now but I would like to take the opportunity to raise attention to this recent true sadness, a story so close to my own that I really feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunity I have been given.
Surrey GP took her own life after her job 'became overwhelming' https://www.gponline.com/surrey-gp-took-own-life-job-became-overwhelming/article/1795081
GP online published an update article 19 October 2022
