Letter to Junior Doctors #2: You are not alone

Often when we are struggling or having a rough time we internalise the struggle and assume that we are the only one going through it. It was 8 years after leaving medicine that I realised I was not alone in my struggles. Know this: every new doctor feels terrified. Frankly, I’d be a little concerned if someone fresh out of medical school said they felt completely confident and unfazed by the enormity of the responsibility thrust upon them. Yet we don’t talk about it. We keep our anxiety to ourselves because we don’t want to look weak. Medicine is dominated by people who are used to being the best of the best; it’s how we got this far. So to own up to feeling uncertain, overwhelmed and less than fully competent is understandably unsettling. Pay no attention to your colleagues who blab on about all the miraculous feats they are accomplishing in the emergency rooms. We all have successes. How often do those guys talk about the lives they...