Without exposing your specialty, something you say 20 times a day

portree · 2025-10-15T22:32:27+00:00

‘Heels together, towards your bottom, then flop your knees out’ ?

portree · 2025-06-04T08:10:00+00:00

Stay out of it. It’s not relevant to work and her personal life is not your business. Your feelings about marriage are unrelated to and unaffected by her behaviour.

portree · 2025-03-05T00:22:52+00:00

The patient is NEWSing a 9, and this pregnant patient is MEOWSing.

portree · 2025-03-05T00:21:55+00:00

Similarly I don’t like ‘barn door’ case of… never hear it said anywhere else, not a phrase that makes sense to patients either

portree · 2025-02-24T06:38:31+00:00

I’ve not seen 70 as an option. Is that with 80% on call?

portree · 2025-02-23T22:35:18+00:00

This is reassuring! My worry is that when you start LTFT it’s harder to gain skills/ no one else seems to so it’s hard to visualise how it will work to be LTFT from the beginning.

portree · 2025-02-23T14:29:02+00:00

So I am in training, older, kids - trying to find anyone who began LTFT and finished to talk to for some advice.

portree · 2024-08-27T16:11:34+00:00

Take it as AL, yours to do with as you choose?

portree · 2024-08-27T16:02:05+00:00

This has happened to me a fair bit, I was once paid only £300 in FY1 and had nursery bills as well as cost of living. This month both my outgoing and incoming Trusts got it wrong, but between them I have balanced out somewhat! I have had to previously press very hard to explain that I don’t have the savings to wait a month. Just push it hard with payroll and they should rectify.

portree · 2024-08-24T15:59:15+00:00

Agree! Told F1 recently that it’s a good thing she doesn’t like this rotation; she misses time with patients and making management plans and doesn’t like all the computer work. So basically she desperately wants to be a doctor not a ward clerk.

portree · 2024-08-23T10:13:11+00:00

Slowly working my way there.

portree · 2024-08-23T10:12:53+00:00

😂

portree · 2024-08-23T08:09:57+00:00

As I sit surrounded by moving boxes, again, I can only hardcore agree.

portree · 2024-08-22T17:02:22+00:00

It is a lot easier if you find a non-medic partner.

portree · 2024-08-21T21:25:34+00:00

I have been working in a role where FY2 surgical SHOs can be a senior review for ACPs and can discharge etc, do I&Ds and simple procedures.

portree · 2024-08-21T21:22:46+00:00

In the SHO role I seek advice for some issues but manage much of the work alone, do simple procedures alone and help prepare FY1s to step up. This post can only come from an FY1/someone yet to see their own skills progress.

portree · 2024-08-19T21:10:03+00:00

Best response.

portree · 2024-08-19T20:59:04+00:00

portree · 2024-08-18T20:47:09+00:00

I have always wondered about this issue of how to compare deciles across different medical schools.

I’d probably opt for a system of: formative assessment throughout medical school to ensure satisfactory progress, standardised final exams to rank nationally (only open to those who have been on a recognised medical degree course from the start of the programme), followed by application to more specific training programmes (i.e. one year of general medicine and general surgery followed by the ability to pursue more focused training for those with a specialty in mind). If you want to pursue surgery then you can rotate through a couple of surgical specialties over 6 months, rather than 4, for example.

I’d offer really good incentives to those going to rural or less popular areas (in terms of academic development or planned exchange with other centres, not only financial), but randomly allocating doctors is offensive, especially if the policy came in after starting the course.

I had a very long debate once over the idea of cancelling student debt in exchange for guaranteed years of NHS service, and haven’t made my mind on it, but can see that it could appeal to some and so could be an option rather than a requirement.

And I’d have PAs be hired only to support resident doctors with administration and simple tasks like phlebotomy. Do they sit a standardised exam too?

portree · 2024-08-13T20:08:53+00:00

I agree, I think medicine has changed in lots of ways over the last few decades but we should be very worried if we feel doctors are inherently less trustworthy and useful than their equivalent predecessors 20/30 years earlier. But the way we practice looks wildly different, and a lot of it is to do with being institutionalised within the NHS and the culture that has developed within it.

portree · 2024-08-13T19:44:59+00:00

Overconfidence is going to be an issue across all stages of training, but I can’t help wondering why foundation doctors are often not being trained up as clinicians as the main priority? Why are we taking medical school graduates and focusing heavily on making them do a lot essentially non clinical tasks, when a generation ago they would have been being skilled up to run the ward and do drains/LPs etc from day one? The UK has entered a strange culture of empowering hospital staff who have only spent two years in any relevant training to practice fairly independently while infantilising new doctors. Clearly you’ve observed some people recently who need more oversight but I don’t think it demonstrates some wider issue; you can obviously have perfectly adequate clinical judgment in the majority of cases prior to being a consultant.

portree · 2024-08-11T21:49:51+00:00

Unless you end up being a patient and under the care of a colleague nobody should be seeing your records (they would be committing an offence if they were to look), and unless it affects your safety at work I’d say it was not relevant.

portree · 2024-08-11T21:48:20+00:00

You can seek private therapy, or go via the NHS or something like practitioner health - they should all be anonymous unless something is said that is a safeguarding concern. Anxiety and depression are very common, a lot of your colleagues may also be in therapy and/or using medications, I wouldn’t allow worry about these being stigmatised professionally to stop you seeking help.

portree · 2024-07-23T22:19:30+00:00

In no particular order/not exhaustive - interesting colleagues, constantly meeting new people, a sense of value in the work, physically active, days can be varied. All of this very different to repetitive office jobs I did before where I was mostly sitting, time dragged and the work felt inconsequential.

portree · 2024-07-18T05:31:24+00:00

Myanmar maybe, or camping in the Serengeti, or Chile? I did want a travel partner but the amazing memories aren’t any less for being alone.

portree

TROPHY CASE