30 November 2017
We're thrilled to see that Rachel Clarke's Your Life In My Hands has been selected for three different best book of 2017 lists as it is published in paperback for the first time. The Guardian prescribed it as one of the five best books by doctors, and the Daily Mail named it one of their 2017 "Must Reads". It was also chosen by Rosamund Urwin for the Evening Standard's Best Books of 2017 list. Your Life In My Hands is the fascinating and moving story of Rachel's time as a junior doctor in the NHS.
'I am a junior doctor. It is 4 a.m. I have run arrest calls, treated life-threatening bleeding, held the hand of a young woman dying of cancer, scuttled down miles of dim corridors wanting to sob with sheer exhaustion, forgotten to eat, forgotten to drink, drawn on every fibre of strength that I possess to keep my patients safe from harm.' How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life? Here, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. Her heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today's NHS is both a powerful polemic on the degradation of Britain's most vital public institution and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service.Your Life In My Hands is released in paperback today, with exclusive new content and a new relevance after this summer's general election and this autumn's budget. You can get your own copy here . . .
. . . and you can stay up to date with Rachel on Twitter @doctor_oxford for more news and thoughts about the NHS and medicine.