If you are into politics, Question Time and Parliamentary debates, this book is for you! Your Life in My Hands continuously praises the work of the doctors and healthcare teams in England, and shows the dedication and compassion needed by the teams to continue to come to work and save lives, even when they feel that the government is working against them. October 1st 2017 She describes herself running between wards, frenzied and sleep-deprived, trying to stay sane while not letting her mounting frustration get in the way of treating patients with kindness and respect. During last year’s historic junior doctor strikes, Rachel was at the forefront of the campaign against the … The politicisation of medicine is a sorry reality, yet the fact remains that the healthcare system operates under the auspices of higher authority and can therefore never be fully independent from any government body. … a decade after we faced the abyss, the compassion and humanity of one NICU nurse remain indelibly etched in my memory. Feeling the bird feebly moving in his hands as it tried to escape his grasp, he felt suddenly very ashamed. Good read! In Your Life in My Hands, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. This is not your usual doctor's memoir and the 88 references would have been the clue if I had bothered to flick through the book before buying it. Even so, the only way you can truly empathise with a patient is to be at the receiving end of medical treatment yourself. To be a medical novice who makes decisions which – if you get them wrong – might forever alter, or end, a person’s life?In Your Life in My Hands, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. The very fact that doctors would abandon their patients to go on strike was enough to highlight their desperation and fierce opposition towards the proposed contractual changes. This review was originally posted on Waterstones.com. In Your Life in My Hands, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. A Junior Doctor’s Story. Tinted with a mixture of worry and optimism, this personal account promulgates a sense of hope for an increasingly battered and underfunded health service. This is echoed by 2018 TV programmes like 'Ambulance' and 'Hospital' as well as friends working in high pressurised NHS environments where firefighting is all they are managing to do. This is frontline medicine rather than grumpy surgeons or hospice philosophy. I regarded myself as reasonably empathetic and thought I could imagine what grieving must feel like. No matter how much doctors wish to be independent, they still fall under the subjugation of government bureaucracy and their choices are still influenced by political imperatives. Title: Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor’s Story. At the age of 29 Rachel Clarke decided on a change of career, a starting out in journalism in television news she decided the pull of a career in medicine was too great. Such an act of compassion filled the wards with a palpable warmth and was especially uplifting for patients who had been forsaken by their families. I love how Clarke reminisces the years of her childhood and youth, when her father would bring the entire family to visit his patients at the cottage hospital where he worked. This culture of silence, compliance and submission that seems to be a subsidiary trait of the hierarchical nature of medicine only perpetuated the establishment of an increasingly brutal culture, where patients can no longer receive quality care. In the end, it boiled down to a battle of words, of who could better manipulate facts and statistics to serve their interests. The wise old man said, “You have a bird, my son.” The boy then asked, “Old man, tell me: Is the bird alive or is it dead?” The wise old man looked at the boy, thought for a moment and said, “Son, the answer lies in your hands.” This old story reminds us of a never changing and always relevant truth. This was an excellent read. 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