I get paid £15.70 an hour.
I’m expected to lead the cardiac arrest team for my clinical area. My current monthly taxable pay is less than that of an SHO 20 years ago.
Considering level of responsibility that is required of me, I think that I deserve more than £15.70 an hour.
The airport security dude tried to throw away my biscoff spread because apparently it’s a liquid, even though the jar measures it in grams, so I made my family wait for me while I ate the jar on the spot. Not throwing away my biscoff. Nope. Nope.
I’m a fully vaccinated doctor. My family are all fully vaccinated. My risk of ending up sick with covid on ITU pre-vaccination was probably small but vaccination is not always about you and your risk, it’s about protecting others
#vaxxeddoctors
I literally have 7 shifts left in ENT and I’ve just been informed that hoarse and horse are not spelt the same… Soz for all the horse patients on the handover for the last 4 months 😂
I do not owe the U.K. government or NHS anything for my medical degree.
But I owe my dad everything. I truly wouldn’t be here without him. I will forever be indebted to him for believing in me.
He told me that I could be a doctor when everyone else said “that’s not for you”
I am a doctor and stomaching racial abuse at work is not part of my job description and it never will be. A patient thought that it was cool to call me racist names in front of senior staff last week. The NHS is a zero tolerance organisation; it's time to stamp this shit out ✊🏾
I am elated to hear that Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba has CCT’d in paediatrics. She is also the reason why I think twice before “doing favours” that circumvent SOP’s/policies. The system hung someone out to dry for a systematic failure once, and I bet they won’t hesitate to do it again.
My trust has moved its risk level to black. The military are on site helping. Urgent procedures are being cancelled again. Everyone is at breaking point. This is unsustainable.
Someone made a comment about how my coloured hair is unprofessional at work last week. Am I doing something incredibly petty in response to piss this person off? Of course I am. My hair my rules. If you don’t like my hair, feel free to close your eyes.
X: “Where are you really from?
Me: “Scotland”
X: “No where do you come from?”
Me: “Well I’ve lived in Scotland for almost 10 years”
X: “No where are you really from??”
Me: “Oooooh, I lived in London before Scotland”
X: 😤 😡
Someone was worried about wearing non-blue scrubs to work in case it looked unprofessional. One of the nurses’ response was: have you met Ivy yet?
My work here is done. Wear what you want. Do your hair how you want. Colour don’t make you “unprofessional” ✨
To the people who keep DM’ing me nasty stuff when I tweet about loving my job:
1. I am VERY aware that I’m an FY1, my job role, and the limits of my competence
2. I am well supported at work and I literally ask consultants before I do anything
3. Can I enjoy my job in peace?
Saw a TikTok about how UK employment law says you’re entitled to a 30 minute uninterrupted break after 4.5 hours of work. *laughs in healthcare professional* 😂
I worked a rota where I had a stretch of working 11 long days (12.5 hr shifts) in 14 days. After the 11th day I fell asleep in my car in the car park after work and only woke up because 2 porters were shaking my car because they thought I was dead.
Christopher Chope(Tory MP) - "The working time directive is in itself responsible for an enormous lack of productivity & potential amongst our workforce in the country"... I want the government to take action in this
Boris Johnson got fined £50 for committing a crime and lying about it.
I got fined £150 for stalling and therefore stopping in a yellow box junction while learning to drive when I was 17.
👀
Wearing my mask at the petrol station earlier, someone said that I shouldn’t wear a mask because it “lowers your oxygen levels”. Explained that I’m a doctor and they’re really important to wear to reduce transmission. Reply - “oh but I saw a Facebook post” 😓 fb > mbchb?!?! 🙃
Reviewed a patient while wearing 4 items that said doctor on them and the patient still called me a nurse and then asked when the doctor was coming to see them 🤦🏾♀️
Will always remember the time I was told by a doctor that “Black people don’t feel pain” after I asked for more than paracetamol for analgesia after broke my leg 🙄
Doctors can be racist. It happens everyday.
Too many people are surprised when my response to hearing that a patient was racist to a member of staff is phone the police (+call it out and support the colleague). Racism is a crime. Just because we’re NHS employees does not excuse racism. We all need to do better.
These hospitals where juniors doctors are ending their lives because of the awful environment they are forced to work in, the departments who repeatedly have horrendous GMC/trainee survey and deanery visit results, we all know about them. There need to be consequences.
Can you seriously stop going on about doubling medical school places when post-foundation docs can’t even get jobs and ward rounds stall to halt if there are 3-4 students on it. We do not have the infrastructure to support this.
The NHS wants to double the number of medical school places.
Labour has a plan to deliver it - funded by abolishing the non-dom tax break for the wealthy.
@Jeremy_Hunt
- swallow your pride and adopt Labour’s plan in your budget. We won’t mind!
I had to explain to one of the patients that I am not a child and assure them that I am definitely old enough to be a doctor this morning after they were raging that the doctor hadn’t come to see them but a child came in and started asking lots of questions 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
Private medical schools are a bad idea. Medicine is not a career that you should be able to buy your way into. I am 100% all for widening access and helping others with their applications etc, but I can’t agree with private med schools.
Physician associate roles and doctor apprenticeships open avenues for students to take non-traditional routes into the medical workforce.
We must help pave the way for them to succeed, say
@aneezesmail
and Sam Everington
#MedEd
#physicianassociate
It feels very weird hearing myself ask anaesthetics if they’re happy to start and for the scrub nurse to give me the scalpel… But we’re getting somewhere with surgical training!!
@DrSelvarajah
We really need The BMA to stand up for us as a profession. Our working conditions are disgraceful, our pay is not reflective of how much it costs to be a doctor and the skill and expertise expected of us. I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. (½)
Black people need SPF too. We can get skin cancer and burn too. If you believe otherwise because Black people “can’t” burn, your thought process is ingrained with racism.
This tweet is 100% aimed at the Karen who said I was being ridiculous for asking a shop assistant for SPF50
I grew up in an area of london with an IMD decile of 1.
I was always in the top 10% of my year at medical school, won multiple prizes for academic excellence, and graduated with honours.
But I’m probably not good enough for people like Emma Duncan.
I can’t unpack the feelings.
One of the regs let me do a case recently! Me! After years of being told I “would never go to med school”
They are also Black & it makes my heart swell with pride because it’s rare that I work with people who also look like me 🥹
#ILookLikeASurgeon
@rosieICM
Nursing stopped being a “vocation” when you needed a university degree, an annual registration fee, 3-4 years of unpaid work to qualify. So the word vocation doesn’t mean that you have to accept poor working conditions and pay Sue.
If you do not understand where HeLa cells came from and how fundamental they have been to medical and scientific research over the last 70 years, you shouldn't be using them.
I wish people would just stop asking me if I’m going to cut my hair or stop braiding my hair for my surgical career because most of the single use surgical hats don’t fit me.
For a Black woman, it’s not “just hair”.
3 years in a row and not a single failure...this demonstrates how low the bar truely is for these guys. Compare this to medical school finals and post graduate exams where pass rates are less than 50% in some cases.
Watching grey’s anatomy for the bants, but I have questions:
- why is the chief of general surgery intubating an ICU patient?
- doesn’t the laryngoscope go in your left hand lol?
You know what, let me continue eating my pasta and pretend these issues aren’t happening ☺️🫣
On a theatre day today and for one of the cases, the reg, the medical student, the scrub nurse, and me - all Black and it made my heart swell with pride and joy 🤎
#ILookLikeASurgeon
I’m glad you survived being worked to the bone.
I have >100k student loan debt.
Pay erosion.
Bullying and racism are rife at work.
I’m just a cell in a spreadsheet & service provision to most people.
I regularly talk myself out of resigning.
Wonder why we’re striking???
FY1 doctors are the first port of call for almost every medical problem for inpatients. Do we really think that £14.13 per hour is a decent wage for someone who is expected to keep you alive, act early if you’re deteriorating, organise your scans/meds/discharge/follow up?
FiY1? Completed! ✅
Can't believe I've got 12 weeks of being a doctor under my belt! I genuinely can't believe that I am a doctor. It's insane but a rewarding privilege to have ✨
We don’t tolerate intoxicated doctors, so why are we ok with having exhausted doctors? We make thousands of important decisions a day, and the government are seriously underestimating the impact of exhaustion on decision making ability.
About 4-5 months into FY1, senior charge nurse cradling me bawling my eyes out on the bathroom floor after a patient (unexpectedly) died while I was cannulating them. I will never forget the kindness that she showed me that day. ❤️
What's an early career trauma that has stayed with you?
I'll go first: my first boss never gave me deadlines, and when I asked for them she just said "everything is ASAP".
I have two UK exit plans that I put together about a year ago. If I don’t get an ENT themed core surgical job this year, I am out of here. It’s not worth it anymore.
Oh so the night we had to do a trauma craniotomy at 3am for an extradural with a fixed pupil could have waited for the morning list?! Damn, I wish the reg and I had known!
HMRC’s reason for emergency taxing me is that apparently I’ve quit my FY2 job and somehow got a new job that pays me £90k/year 2 days later, lol in my dreams 😅
did a wee ED shift and was told it’s *just a wee ankle injury* and i pulled back the covers to see their tibia poking out and attached to a pale af foot 👀
Sometimes I think about the specialities that I wrote off as a career choice because of how one person treated me. A large reason why I love ENT, is because a consultant was absolutely lovely, took me to theatre, helped me with audit/publication, and showed me that ENT is 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾
when you’ve just seen that your patient’s potassium is higher than their eGFR and the nurse calls you because their ECG looks weird and they’ve stopped producing urine
Racism is still rife in this country.
Patients calling me names and asking for a white doctor.
Being called a ni**er.
People being “surprised” that I have a British passport. Even though I was born in London.
Having the police called for entering my childhood home.
Superdrug understood the assignment. Eyebrow lady wiped everything down with dettol or barbecide, PPE on, no mask no service, customers socially distanced, plus a cheeky wee NHS discount. ✅✅✅
Do not ask me where I’m really from. It is racist. Especially when don’t seem to accept whatever answer I give you. My family heritage is none of your business. And to start throwing abuse at me because I don’t want to disclose personal info to you is not okay either.
Did my first solo successful ultrasound guided cannula and of course nobody was watching so me and the patient are celebrating this event by ourselves 🥳
No, my name isn’t *insert speciality here*, I’m Ivy and I’m on for speciality X.
Being called FY2/speciality name is something that really grinds my gears.
I’m a person. I’m your colleague. I have a name, I use your name when talking to you, why can’t you use mine?
Closed a wound by myself for the first time today! 💕
Maybe I am following in my mum’s footsteps (tailor) technically by becoming a surgeon - sewing is sewing right?
Why is Rishi pledging to rebuild Britain's economy in his leadership manifesto as if he wasn't Chancellor for three years? Hun, that was literally your job until a couple of days ago...
I find it so crazy how pharmacists have to do so much extra to become prescribers, meanwhile medical students tick the box in the PSA and are then given free reign, yet we ask the pharmacy about a billion times a day how to prescribe whatever the consultant asked for?!?!
There’s no legal requirement to self-isolate due to covid after the 24th of March. In the middle of this pandemic? Let me go and scream into a pillow before I say something that will get me into trouble.
My mum unexpectedly died in 4th year of med school. It left me an anxious mess trying to navigate through finals and placement. I am not ashamed that I needed meds to help me heal. I finished med school with a distinction and ranked in the top 10% of my class in 4th year.
@kristinhamill
@DoohanRachel
I’ve noticed it indeed!
Hence my concern that if someone is unable to withstand the relatively pedestrian pressures of the undergraduate course without medicating their anxiety, they’re unlikely to sustain a career as a doctor.
It’s tough out here!!
when a not on-call consultant holds the phone for you so you can get the last of your ST3 index procedures done and you get it done supervised trainer unscrubbed! 🥺🥺🥺
I've made the decision to not do any speciality exams or even apply for a training programmes until after FY2. Medicine has taken over and as much as I love it, I need a break. I need time to just chill out, enjoy my first proper job and grow as a person 💕✨
Imagine seeing my little don’t touch my hair badge, touching my hair, and then crying that I’m mean when I tell you to get off? 🙃
I’m not your pet guinea pig. If you want to learn about Black hair - there’s google or you can respectfully ask me.
Training shouldn’t be putting us in the position to choosing if we want to uproot our entire lives and potentially be miserable for 8 years just for a chance at run-through.
Overturning Roe v Wade will not stop abortions. It will prevent access to safe abortions. People will die as a result of restricting access to safe abortion.
Abortion is a human right.
Abortion is healthcare.
I know it’s the imposter syndrome. But someone said something to me and I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t belong in medicine. It’s so hard to do this job when nobody looks like you. Nobody has the same disabilities as you. It just makes me feel like an outsider.
I genuinely think my mental health was so much better in FY1 because I worked in a hospital where 99% of the rooms had windows - INCLUDING DOCTORS’ OFFICES
@juliaisobela
I told someone on the ward that I had teaching and bumped into them at the airport 2 hours later. We are now on the same team at work. My lies have not been forgotten. 😭