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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, easy- to-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 middle- aged 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.


REVIEWS


UNITED KINGDOM CASEBOOK | VOLUME 19 | ISSUE 1 | JANUARY 2011 www.mps.org.uk


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