Intern: A Polish-Canadian Junior Doctor in Scotland

By Kenneth Moreland

The learning curve only gets steeper after medical school ends, as a new graduate up his first post in Scotland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trial & Error Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223576150

Book preview

Intern

A Polish-Canadian Junior Doctor in Scotland

Kenneth Moreland

Trial & Error Press

Copyright © 2023 Trial & Error Press

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9798223576150

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

The Intern

A New World

The Haunted House

The Deep End

The Old Edition

Student Nurse in Charge

The C and K Words

More Confusion

Decent Docent Daniel

All-Natural Benzodiazepines

Cross Your T’s and Dot Your I’s

Perspective

Adherence, Part One

Adherence, Part Two

Everybody Lies

Side Effects of Cocaine May Include Boredom

Elgin to Aberdeen

The New Hospital

Cycles

Senior Middle-Grade Junior Doctor

Deadly Donuts

The Cardiothoracic Psychiatrist

Super Human

My Schedule

An Introduction to Mind Reading

A Wizard

The Power of the Stethoscope

A Fall

Geographical Therapy

Recuperation

Bored in My Palace

A New Diagnosis

Rehabilitation

Dictation is No Vacation

Ups & Downs

Dr Blueberry, Dr Hunter’s Stew

Sacrifice

Just Once

An Honest Question

The Wrong Idea

The Day Comes

So Long

To Drs ED, FE, DB, HR, SS and CP

Drs FA, JK, SM, SL, ZT and LM

And to AYM, AU, CM, KD and KS:

Thank You

This is for my mother

Disclaimer

You will not find a Dr Kenneth Moreland on the register kept by the General Medical Council. Neither will such a name be found in the published medical literature. For reasons that will soon become apparent, I have chosen to adopt a pseudonym for this work. The names of other persons appearing in the text have also been anonymised or otherwise altered.

Dates given may be approximate. While some exact dates are burnt into the memory and can be recalled even years later, other have been forgotten. And yet 10 July 2017 reads better than In the summer of 2017. Many dates that I do remember have been changed to protect the confidentiality of everyone involved. Just like my name and the names of any patients.

What you are reading is, nevertheless — other than the liberties mentioned above — a set of true stories.

The Intern

Holding in my hands a certificate from the General Medical Council it is harder to deny that I am no longer a medical student. I have graduated. And now I am a provisionally registered (and licensed) medical practitioner in all of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Now I am meant to be the doctor. The lifesaver. The expert. Not the student but the teacher.

And I am not that. Not yet.

Before being considered competent to practice with full independence, as far as that is

ever possible, medical graduates must train under the supervision of more senior clinicians. At first, you are the least experienced member of the team, and each year you take on more responsibility and inch closer to one day being an attending consultant doctor. What patients sometimes call a real doctor. As a house officer in the UK’s Foundation Programme, which I am about to commence, I start at the very beginning of this process.

So I am not a real doctor.

But not a student.

Something in between.

A junior doctor.

A graduate trainee.

An intern.

A New World

28 July 2017 Aberdeen, Scotland

COMING FROM MY two homes of Canada and Poland I quickly realize that the United Kingdom is not like that part of the Commonwealth with which I am familiar, or even like the rest of the European Union. To start with: there are two taps, hot and cold. I cannot help but find this vastly inferior to taps on the continent where hot and cold water can be mixed to a desired temperature. An engineer tells me that the way it is done in the UK saves money by