Your Life In My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story

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There have been many books written by young doctors… but none comes close to Clarke’s’ - Sunday Times Clarke has written the UK's human story of Covid. Weaving together stories of patients, families, nurses, doctors and paramedics as the virus spread from New Year's Day to the end of April 2020. She reveals the desperate times and the government's mistakes but also how people from all walks of life - inside the NHS and out - have tried to reach out and show goodness to one another ― Stylist

My times are in thy hand: Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. I feared that, if my hours and workload continued as they were, I might fail to cling onto the one thing that had driven me into medicine in the first place: my compassion.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. 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. Her father’s temperament and compassion towards his patients became a guiding beacon for Clarke’s own journey into medicine. I truly admire Clarke’s patient-centred approach to her work and like her, I aspire to be a doctor who can make patients feel loved and understood. My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me. A searing insider's account of being a doctor during the tsunami of coronavirus deaths . . . It says everything about her character that Clarke refuses to settle for despair, focusing on the human decency she has seen ― Independent Your Life in My Hands is at once a powerful polemic on the systematic degradation of Britain’s most vital public institution, and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service and those who support it. This extraordinary memoir offers a glimpse into a life spent between the operating room and the bedside, the mortuary and the doctors' mess, telling powerful truths about today’s NHS frontline, and capturing with tenderness and humanity the highs and lows of a new doctor’s first steps onto the wards in the context of a health service at breaking point - and what it means to be entrusted with carrying another’s life in your hands.

This shows that medicine can never operate efficiently on an individual level; it takes a well-organised and system to keep the profession going. While individual healthcare workers often enter the profession with the best intentions at heart, their idealism can soon be crushed by the weight of responsibility in underfunded, understaffed hospitals, where speaking up to seniority is equated with blatant disrespect. 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. The Health of the Medical Workforce Since his days are determined and the number of his months is with You, and since You have set limits that he cannot exceed,This memoir of the first wave of Covid will, I predict, be read a century from now as one of the best eyewitness accounts of what happened in the nation's wards in 2020. But it is no less important that it be read now, as a riveting, heart-wrenching testimony from the front line . . . Clarke writes with grace and empathy about her patients and colleagues . . . A must-read -- Matthew D'Ancona, Tortoise Media Firstly the narrator cannot pronounce words such as telephonist and Agence France Presse, amongst countless others. Her voice has an annoying patronising tone. The writer tries to paint herself as struggling to pay herself through med school, neglecting to be honest about being married to a fighter pilot at the time. This isn't a poor single woman modestly paying her way. She's the third generation of a well to do medical family with ample support and funds. That's fine but don't paint a picture that is different from the reality of a privileged public school girl, immersed in the medical world from birth, who was fortunate enough to have husband and family to support her to become a doctor after a brief career in journalism. As Clarke shares some of the traumatic experiences she went through in understaffed hospital shifts, I am moved by her longing to do the best for her patients—a worthy desire which is constantly being thwarted by the long hours and an impossible workload. 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.

I hope sincerely that the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt has read Rachel Clarke’s passionate memoir but I doubt it. I am passionate about our NHS and the heroes that work in the NHS. I cannot praise Your Life in My Hands high enough. It you care about the future of the NHS then this is a book you must read. To Rachel Clarke I say thank you for writing this important book that in years to come may yet be a book every junior doctor will want to read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. My personal conviction is that the primary goal of any healthcare system should be to serve its people and ensure their health and wellbeing. The vision of the NHS is awe-inspiring, yet, sadly, it has been increasingly besieged by policies that contradict its founding principles. Most Interesting Part of the Book In the long run, without proper measures to ease the burden on overstretched doctors, patient care will be severely compromised. Not only that, doctors and nurses can succumb to mental health problems precipitated by stress, anxiety and guilt at not being able to deliver the quality of care that their patients deserve. While it is no fault of the individual, it can seem to some doctors like a personal failure. Yet, when she finally emerged as a junior doctor at over thirty years of age and entered into the profession she had pursued with fervour, she became disillusioned by the punishing workload and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s unjust accusations towards junior doctors for failing to deliver an exemplary standard of care and a seven-day NHS. Despite being at the lowest position in the hierarchy of the medical profession, Clarke, like many other junior doctors, felt the need to speak up and voice her concerns. This led her to adopt a leading role in the activism against the proposed junior doctors’ contract. Through it all, she stayed true to the prioritisation of patient care and expressed her deep attachment and loyalty to the NHS, which threatened to be upended by unreasonable governmental policies. Tinted with a mixture of worry and optimism, this personal account promulgates a sense of hope for an increasingly battered and underfunded health service. Reflections The Distinctiveness of Britain’s Health System My lots are in thy hands. Deliver me out of the hands of my enemies; and from them that persecute me.Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(15) My times are in thy hand-- i.e., the vicissitudes of human life (LXX. and Vulg. have "my destinies") are under Divine control, so that the machinations of the foe cannot prevail against one whom God intends to deliver. For the expression comp. 1Chronicles 29:30, "the times that went over him," Isaiah 33:6. My times are in Your hands; Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from those who pursue and persecute me. Clarke, who comes from four generations of doctors, is a skilful writer and her passion for her profession shines through the many personal, moving and unsettling stories of life on the front line. One patient with cancer is told with extraordinary tenderness that she is going to die; another makes an astonishing recovery when all seemed futile. And there is a very intimate description of death itself. 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. After all, both her father and grandfather both had careers in medicine. So now it time for Rachel to follow in their footsteps. In Your Life in My Hands Rachel Clarke talks passionately about life as a junior doctor in the NHS.