‘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.’