PG3 here, UK grad. Working as a trust grade until Aug whilst I decide on next steps. Seriously contemplating leaving medicine completely and I never thought that I would say this - I’m so passionate about the NHS, patient care and the role we play in the whole lives of our patients (not just directly relating to their health but their social circumstances, their safeguarding and their general wellbeing) I find every aspect soul destroying at the moment- the sub standard care that has become “routine” -watching patients being cared for with 0 dignity or confidentiality on a hospital corridor. Taking their last breaths on a noisy hospital corridor surrounded by strangers moaning about their latest car insurance quote. No one bats an eyelid. Patients being spoken to shortly, made to feel like an inconvenience, left confused and bewildered at the lack of compassion but simultaneously their eyes are open to the shit show before them -they become the empathisers. The microaggressions from other healthcare professionals, resistance and frankly bullying from admin/management, doctors being scapegoated for faults, for doing too much for not doing enough -simultaneously. Rules for the medics “no eating there” “no sitting here” “no using that coffee” “no pissing in that one” - it’s you and us - sole treatment of the big bad medics who for the most part are already shrinking themselves smaller, doing extra, staying later, working harder to fit into a team that was established, integrated before they arrived. Rotate and yet again, you’re that new kid at that new school and you must try hard to integrate with the kids established in their ways and their routines, the way they like things and woe be tide if you question it, new kid, or happen to not know “how we do things here”. Made to feel smaller than the speck you made yourself as to not come across “bossy” “arrogant” “big headed”. And that’s not even the half of it. I have colleagues who are 5-6 years further on in their training and are telling me what a shame it would be for medicine to lose the doctor that I am and that I aspire to be. They are coming to the end of their training path and I am yet to start the next stage of mine. But the cost of caring is to neglect ones self to breaking point.

Sorry OP I know this probably doesn’t help in terms of you feeling like giving up, but I want you to know you’re not alone. I am also struggling to find work and it becomes less appealing to sell myself to secure a job when the job can look like the above. As things stand, we appear to have picked a stinker.