The Angry Medic: Now With Twice The Crappiness!

It's a fact: medical school is crazy. Sometimes I wonder why anyone would want to slog their way through years and years of school, then go through the teeth-gnashing application process, during which half your hair is lost (someone please tell me this wasn't just me. right? RIGHT? Hello? --Editor) then get into med school only to slave away for over half a decade, worry about catching diseases from patients, damage vital body parts and keep slogging until you get a nice, comfy space six feet underground in which to sleep for all eternity (unless you're Hindu, in which case you've got about 10 minutes' downtime until the next incarnation, depending on how good you've been --Ed). And as a bonus, if you live in Britain, you get to graduate and take your place in a mess of a national healthcare system complete with nurses pretending to be doctors, managers who sit around in meetings discussing little more than how to make life harder for you, and crazy power-mad politicians intent on cleaning up said healthcare system by getting rid of your sorry arrogant doctor ass. Dr Crippen puts it nicely--be sure to check out the comments as well.

But I'll tell you this about medical school: it gives you loads of material to blog about. And whilst blogging on this blog may have slowed down a bit (thanks to no less than the Creator of the Universe trying to KILL ME! I've caught a sore throat and lost my voice now--does anyone else see a pattern here? --Ed) it's partly because I've also been writing my first few posts for The Differential, Medscape's medical student blog, whose editor (surprisingly) liked my writing so much she invited me to write for them.


The Differential gives readers all over the world an insight into the lives of medical students, and features some very good writing. However, it tends to be a bit serious at times, and I'm hoping that a diiference in tone (read: an idiot writing about his misadventures --Ed) may serve to lighten the mood a little.

My first post was on a topic I've moaned about here before: the lack of clinical exposure in Cambridge. Comments I got ranged from (a little paraphrasing here) "aww, you poor thing, I know just how you feel" to "be thankful you're in Cambridge, bitch. Shut up and get on with it" which is another reason I love blogging for The Differential. It's touching to know people out there sympathise.

Just a couple of days ago I got my second post up. This one's about the importance of patient confidentiality, a lesson I learnt both on my adventures as a bumbling first aider as well as during my attempt to be a heroic air-stewardess-impressing lifesaver on a plane. Do check it out and leave a few nice comments so the editor doesn't realise she's made a terrible mistake and fires me.

And in a few days my next post should appear; it's a rather passionately written yarn about the treatment of housemen, which was inspired by a debate breaking out in my local newspapers (to which I wrote a hot reply to, of course, which has resulted in the number of death threats to my house doubling). Enjoy the lack of profanity, folks.

On another note: does anyone know where HospitalPhoenix has run off to?

Someone tell me he hasn't gone the same way as Angry NHS Doctor (the second doc blog on my blogroll).