Beyond the stethoscope

Featured in

  • Published 20140805
  • ISBN: 9781922182425
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

‘THERE WOULDN’T BE a day goes by that I don’t think about giving up.’ It’s a cold winter’s morning as we huddle together over an early breakfast. Doctor X speaks rapidly, fidgets incessantly with her spoon, and darts looks over her shoulder occasionally to see if she will be overheard. ‘It is probably not a good week to be interviewing me,’ she says. ‘I have just been doing my financials and it’s not stacking up. I don’t know how I’m going to afford to keep practicing.’ 

I have agreed to do this interview anonymously and I have the sense that I am about to hear a darker story about the practice of medicine. Sure enough, Dr X begins by telling me about a female colleague who took her own life a decade ago. This catastrophic event led her to review her own stress and a year off. She never went back to the group clinic. ‘I like to spend time with people. I couldn’t negotiate that with the people I was working with; I was getting three hours behind and more and more stressed. I was basically told that I needed a medical certificate from my doctor if I was to have what I wanted, in terms of time to practice longer consults, which I wasn’t prepared to do. I was also forced to work at the local hospital emergency department, even though I didn’t feel I had the skills. That was what really did me in. So I just left and went out on my own.’

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

More from this edition

Flying high

EssayTWO DECADES AGO, my father, then in his mid-seventies, used to fly to the northern New South Wales town of Lismore several times a...

Applying life’s lessons

EssayLAST WINTER I was lying in the red dirt in the middle of the Sandover Highway two hundred kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. I...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.