I looked up at the black sky and saw darkness. I hadn’t seen the sun in a few weeks. When I left home, it was dark. When I arrived home, it was dark. On post call days, seeing the sun felt abnormal. It burned. I was on call. I packed my bag and drove to work in silence. I had this funny thought on my mind recently. We are so good at preparing how to live. We know how to sacrifice 10+ years for a degree, working hard for knowledge, a car, a house etc.. and over time we lose our sense of appreciating living in the moment. Years become a blurr. I decided to arrive 45 minutes early to type out ..read more

Sometimes I feel like I am living my life in slow motion, in reverse procession. I could be doing a random act and thoughts from 5 years ago surface. I brush it off as a random memory but quickly feel depth in it. It means something. I guess you can’t process your life if you’re constantly in survival mode. Your goal is to survive, everything else is a distraction. Once you’re safely over the speed hump that is 5 years long (hi medicine), the not-so-great wall of China you’ve built around yourself is let down slowly. Brick by brick, you allow yourself to actually acknowledge how you felt 5 ye ..read more

Calls are like public toilets. You either open the lid and see a squeaky clean bowl or a sh*t show. There’s often nothing in between. I didn’t realise it when I had this thought, but it’s true. I was in a situation where I witnessed 2 colleagues having a heated discussion. The argument was born out of which speciality a patient belonged to, at 3am. This is not uncommon for Casualty work. Often there are patients with a long grocery list of problems that overlap between specialities. The patient was a 78 year old sweet lady, who reminded me of my own grandma who had diabetes, hypertension, a ..read more

Doctors are often in the hot seat when addressing patients. It’s never good enough. Too little said, too vaguely, too harshly, too impersonal, too quickly, too confusing, too much medical jargon, not enough medical detail… the list is endless. Surgeons in particular are notorious for their…. abrupt bedside manner. The Don was different.  I remember being a surgical intern in a very busy unit. I was on call with The Don. The Don was a great surgeon and a man of just the right amount of words, not too many or too few. I learned alot about what actual communication of patients looked like ..read more

I wouldn’t call myself very superstitious per say but I do believe in the general medical world do’s and dont’s. Don’t say “Quiet” on your call. If you do, touch real wood. Don’t bring too much food on call, only basics because if you do, you probably won’t eat it because you’ve invited too many admissions. Don’t wear bright colors on call, it invites trouble. I’ve learned all these rookie mistakes by being a rookie for a very very long time. Post pandemic, I found myself at one of the largest hospitals in the country’s neonatal unit. Life was pulling me in different directions and I wasn’t ..read more

I’m of the opinion that South Africans in general have a good sense of humor in comparison to the rest of the world but South African doctors in particular have an added sense of humor. I guess it’s necessary as a coping mechanism. The humour is a must, but sometimes has a hint of darkness. I’m not sure why. I guess With all the blood and gore flying around, you get conditioned by it and it helps you survive. You have to be able to laugh at situations, the system, the government, people and especially yourself (Mostly yourself). I have been carried through some dark times by humor. I remember ..read more

There was a time in my life (not so long ago) that I physically felt my body buckle under the pressure of overnight calls. No matter how much I would sleep, hydrate, meditate and pep talk myself the day before, my body began unraveling at the seams. My usual steady state of functionally tired morphed into dysfunctional fatigue. There is a stupid notion that exists amongst doctors/people that you can “sleep in advance” so to speak. I guess the logic behind that is if you store enough sleep in your cells, you can cash these “sleep tokens” in at 1:00am on call, when you desperately need it. I c ..read more

Some situations in medicine end up sticking with you, no matter how hard you try and shake them off. For me, this is one of them. it has been firmly planted into my memory and I occasionally have flashbacks, not in some detrimental dramatic way, but in a thoughtful and introspective one. Like most of the stories I tell, it usually starts with a 24-hour call and this situation was no different. I presented myself to my call and attended the handover diligently, waiting to suss out the pre-call patient situation. I waited for the day team to handover the overnight work for the ward patients. I ..read more

The Dunning-kruger effect is well known in psychology as a type of cognitive bias that links confidence and competence graphically. In short, overconfidence is rooted in stupidity. The graph depicts the stages in which knowledge and wisdom is acquired and the self-realization of our own shortfalls. I think if anywhere, the Duning-Kruger effect is so important in clinical medicine. By studying and understanding where along the spectrum we lie, we realise our gaps and aim to build on them. Ego and arrogance take a backseat and allow introspection and growth to take over. My time as doctor has g ..read more

Have you ever stood over a pot of water, awaiting the precise second it boils, massive bubbles of water quickly rise to the surface in the blink of an eye and pours over, steaming the stove plate. You’re waiting in intense anticipation for the moment the bubbles show themselves, so you can move the pot over, but the moment the water reaches boiling point, its out of control and spills over the edge so fast, you’re too late and you have scalded hands and a mouth full of foul words. Imagine this scenario once. Now imagine it 100000 times over. In the heart and mind of every Healthcare worker in ..read more