Category: Personal stories

Working as a trainee in the Accident and Emergency Medical Department, I treated 3 young lads whose wrists had been broken as they stood with their hands on the barrier whilst watching a football match. Their wrists had been overextended as the crowd behind them surged down the terraces when a goal had been scored. […]

Working in the casualty department on the day that City played United at Old Trafford, I treated 3 young lads who had been injured whilst on the terraces watching the match. Their wrists had been over stretched and broken when there had been a surge down the terraces during an exciting moment during a match. […]

Every Christmas Day morning when I was a child, I visited either Stockport Infirmary or Stepping Hill Hospital. This was in the 1950s when we lived in Davenport, approximately half way between the two hospitals. My father was Rupert Sykes who was one of the two physicians that served the hospitals at that time. Today, […]

Wishing that I could be watching the football match at Old Trafford instead of working in the Casualty Dept at the Infirmary, I was busy treating patients with various lumps, bumps and bruises when three teenage boys arrived. They had been watching Manchester United play Manchester City. I can’t remember now whether it was a […]

It’s been an idyllic holiday. For the last fortnight, my wife and I have escaped the British winter and cruised around the Caribbean on a luxury liner. We’ve visited ten different islands; St Kitts, St Lucia, Dominica, and Martinique amongst them and, as sit here on an Airbus 330 on the flight home, the long […]

It was a Saturday afternoon in August 1976 and the occasion of the annual cricket match between the hospital consultants and the junior doctors.  The juniors never had any trouble fielding a team, but the consultants often had to supplement their side with friends, relatives, or their colleagues in general practice. Since the object of the […]

Almost all of my medical experience had been spent in a hospital environment; mainly as a medical student but also as a junior doctor. I had noticed that consultants sometimes spoke of their general practitioner colleagues with a certain disdain. They seemed to regard themselves as superior beings and were prone to comment adversely on […]

My pager sounded its loud, shrill, urgent call, something that always caused my heart to flutter. It was an anxious technician from the pathology laboratory. “Doctor, you’ve sent us a blood sample on a man called Walter Franklin. The request card says he had surgery yesterday. I thought you ought to know; his haemoglobin is […]

Standing in the corridor outside the office door, angry and frustrated, I wondered what I should do until the nursing hand over was finished? I had been publicly humiliated when I walked onto the ward on my first morning as a doctor. Sister Ashbrook, damn her, had inferred that I was still a medical student, […]

I have the greatest admiration for nurses. They are wonderful, caring, hard working people who do a great job, often in difficult circumstances. So I wasn’t surprised when I started my first job as a resident doctor, that I was advised by my consultant to heed the immense experience and wisdom of the ward sisters […]