Product Description

If you're going to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning. Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet - for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not. Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry. All Creatures Great and Small meets Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a humorous and accessible peek into a world that you'd normally need a medical degree to witness.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19887 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Painfully funny.' --Boris Johnson

'Very funny and frank account of his time working as a juniro doctor in the NHS.' --Independent

'Reads like Scrubs: The Blog... This diary-style account of Pemberton's first year on the wards is funny and awful in equal measure.' --Maureen Lipman

Review
'TRUST ME I'M A JUNIOR DOCTOR is painfully funny.' (Boris Johnson )

'very funny and frank account of his time working as a juniro doctor in the NHS.'

(Independent )

'Reads like Scrubs: The Blog... This diary-style account of Pemberton's first year on the wards is funny and awful in equal measure.' (Observer )

'Reading his absurdly funny, beautifully observed, day to day, horror stories from the wards, made me laugh and shudder.' (Maureen Lipman )

Synopsis
If you're going to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning. Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pembertons touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about saving people and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet. For example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not. Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry All Creatures Great And Small meets Bridget Jones's Diary, in this humorous and accessible peek into a world which normally requires a medical degree, a scratch golf handicap and ward-clearing halitosis.

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Customer Reviews

Just what the doctor ordered
This book I first heard about on Radio 4 when it was serialised and had me laughing and teary eyed. I got it and it didn't disappoint. It was funny, addictive, genuine and a real pleasure to read. It highlights the ups and downs and everything in between about being a doctor in the NHS.

Engaging enough, but not ground-breaking
Max Pemberton has written an engaging account of his first year as a junior doctor, which I enjoyed reading, but there's something all too familiar about the trials and tribulations he runs through here. Any casual viewer of medical dramas such as "Casualty", "Holby City" , "Cardiac Arrest", "Bodies", "E.R." (etc, etc, etc) will be aware that junior doctors are overworked, underpaid, put under pressure by superiors, and often feel that they are out of their depth. Similarly, the idea that hospitals are being overrun with bureaucracy, paperwork, targets, league tables (etc, etc, etc) is nothing new.

Other familiar medical territory that has the crash team called, the paddles readied and the electric charge applied here includes Max losing heart and beginning to consider other career choices (a dilemma resolved in predictable fashion); family members who complain the young doctor has lost weight and needs to be fed up, etc; nurses being under-appreciated; junior doctors making mistakes (though none that are actually that bad); a senior doctor who is a ladies man and works his way through the younger, impressionable female doctors; X-rays, blood tests, brain scans etc being very difficult to obtain unless special favours can magically be called in by nurses and administration staff who manage to fix things for our hero and earn his eternal gratitude; and an impassioned defence of the NHS. It is all very readable, and I have no doubt that it is all very accurate, but this book is not ground-breaking, and does not take any risks in its depiction of a junior doctor's first year.

Max is a very likeable narrator, and his writing style is gently amusing, if not as hilarious as some of the cover blurb promises the reader. I am greatly reassured that there are doctors out there with his professional, caring and conscientious attitude. However, he's altogether just too nice, and the path of a junior doctor already so well-trodden in books, TV, cinema, newspapers and so on and so forth, for this gentle, familiar account to have any real bite, or lasting impact on the reader.

Enjoyable, but Episodic
Max Pemberton relates his experiences of the UK's National Health Service, where I also worked for 10 years. Many of his anecdotes brought on a wry smile of recognition.

When I was studying for an MBA I remember learning about corporate culture (now an overused and devalued term) and how it might be described using myths, heroes, legends, stories, jargon, rites and ritual. An NHS manager on my course suggested the consultant's ward round as an example of a ritual. In it the medical consultant and a retinue of junior doctors progress through a ward reviewing and discussing patients. An extreme example can be seen in the film "Doctor in the House" (1954) when the formidable Sir Lancelot Sprat humiliates his underlings.

Max Pemberton seems also to lie at the bottom of the pecking order, because he's packed off to get the coffee and croissants for the round. That seems poor reward for the time he spent excavating X-ray films from behind radiators and tracking down missing pathology samples and results in preparation for the ritual. He even has to transpose manually drugs charts by interpreting the glyphs of senior medical staff. But they say there is little evidence to support the use of Information Technology in healthcare (!)

On the downside it is episodic, which tends to conceal an overall story line, other than the hell of being a junior doctor. Nontheless, I enjoyed it and it, and for those who haven't worked for the supertanker that is the NHS it offers a peek into its engine room.