Junior Doctors; Eat your heart out

The European Working Time directive is old news. Junior doctors are not supposed to work more than 48 hours a week. They, of course, still do. And so do many other health-care professionals.

Including medical students. Especially in their holiday time.

What do medical students do in their holidays? Well, you may go away with the family, take a week or two away with your better half, or if you're part of the lucky few, you'll go travelling. Lots of people in my year group and lots of people in the years above and below me have gone travelling this summer - Eastern Europe seems to be the destination of choice at the moment. And good for them! They will see magnificent, strange and different parts of the world that they may never get to see again.

However, there are those of us who simply cannot afford to do these wonderful things. Some of us are working 64 hours a week in the local supermarket just so we can afford to go back to university in September. This is highly illegal. It is disgusting. When I asked the manager at work he had never even heard of the European Working Time Directive. What a surprise.

The student loans system is a complete mess. The poor are well off under the system. The rich are, as the rich always are, well off under the system. That leaves us middle-of-the-roaders.

One of my housemates at University owns a car. He can afford to run this car and come to University and still pay rent, bills, buy his own food without any support from his parents. He does not have a bank overdraft.

Is he rich or poor?

The Student Loans Company says that he is poor. Therefore, they have given him the full loan available, paid all of his tuition fees and given him the maximum 'higher education grant'.

Another of my friends at medical school does not own a car. She has quite well-off parents who give her a generous £300 a month allowance. She is saving for a car and can easily afford rent, bills, food, new clothes and treats for herself and her boyfriend. She does not have a bank overdraft. Quite rightly, the student loans company says that she is rich, and gives her the minimum loan available to her and does not pay any of her tuition fees and doesn't give her a higher education grant.

I know that I would never be able to afford a car while at University. My father has just been made redundant from 'darn pit' and my mother earns £14000 as a nursery nurse. I can afford rent, food, a good time and not much else. I survived this year thanks to my generous £1900 bank overdraft.

The student loans company says that I am rich. WTF?? My father is now earning minimum wage (compared to his £32000 pit salary), my mother earns about the average for the area and they also have my sister (just starting University) to support. They cannot afford to give me any money.

So here I am, in my summer vacation, illegally working 64 hours a week under immensly stressful conditions just to pay off my bank overdraft. There are many more in much worse a situation than I.

I should not be doing this. I should be in Bratislava with my housemates.

The caring profession(s)

My Grandmother has breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and was given the all-clear. However, something else appeared on her skin and tests have shown that she now has it for good. So she has lots of treatment.

One of the problems that she is currently facing is allergy to dressings (which may or may not be drug induced). She has to have lots of dressings on her arms because of massive lymphoedema (some as worse as elephantiasis) and she simply cannot tolerate some of the dressings. I think it's fair to say that she is pretty fed-up. She now has to have radiotherapy - she went for it the other day to be told be the radiologist/radiographer(?) that the line up for the radiation beam "doesn't look right" so she has to arrange another appointment.

On top of all these problems, she has to put up with the caring professions. Nana is a strong willed woman. She has lots of pride and will stand up to almost anyone and anything. I have lots of respect for her. This is why I cringe when she tells me that whenever she goes to clinic or whenever the nurse comes to give her the Herceptin that's keeping her alive, she has to put up with people saying "ooooh, you poor woman." The other day everything was too much for her. She lashed out. "I'm not a poor bloody woman, i'm fine, i've just got a bit of a rash and breast cancer." True, infact Nana says that at the moment she's felt better than she has at any other time during her treatment.

You may think, in all fairness, that whoever was on the receiving end of that was only doing their job. Of course, any first day medical student knows that healthcare is primarily about the care. But in my short time as a healthcare professional, i've witnessed many other professionals, perhaps even myself, being over-patronising and perhaps even insulting to patients in the pursuit of "good care." Some people don't want to be molly-coddled all the time and told how "poor" they are. They may appreciate a bit of empathy every now and then, but i'm quite sure that they won't want people telling them how bad everything is for them at the moment.

And i'm sure that they don't want nurses a quarter of their age shouting "Oh no...let's get that cleaned up" as if they are young children in their ears when their incontinence has got the better of them like happens in certain wards in a certain local hospital.

I'm surprised that there aren't more lash-outs.

Passed!

I've just got back from a week away in the sun - brilliant!

I've also managed to pass my second year exams, and am really looking forward to starting year 3!

Hopefully, i'll have something to write about soon.