Junior Doctors - Their careers down the drains...?

I've just finished watching the first episode of the new series of the BBC's Junior Doctors: Your Life in Their Hands. The question I'm left asking is: why would any newly qualified doctor put themselves through that? Medicine is a close knit community and your reputation is the currency you train upon; being known as 'that fool off of the TV who can't put a cannula in' is not going to help matters.

Furthermore while there is a certain amount of judicious editing and melodramatic narration, some of the ineptitude on show in this week's episode is deeply worrying. Even as a lowly fourth year medical student, let loose on the wards for the first time last October I was successfully putting in cannulae and taking bloods unsupervised within weeks, and I'm not the exception amongst my peers at Clinical School. This leaves me worrying about other medical schools, are they really churning out graduates who are uncertain about these most basic of medical tasks? Furthermore we are constantly warned about managing our public images and avoiding situations which could compromise our credibility, so its quite surprising to see the closing scenes graced by two of our young medics knocking back tequila shots! They are inevitably treading a fine line by having their working lives complete with all their mistakes and failings broadcast to the nation, risking bringing the medical profession into disrepute, not in the legal sense, but in the national psyche. Doctors are one of the most trusted occupations, while it may mean being a little circumspect about the more 'gritty' reality hows, I'd quite like it if we kept it that way.

I hoped to have a nice appropriately themed photo to pop in here but as we, quite rightly, aren't allowed to take snaps in the hospital the cupboard is bare. Instead enjoy a random shot of King's Chapel I took today: