Starting back at the bottom

I have lost count of the times that people have told me that I must have been upset to give up surgery. It seemed that everyone who interviewed me thought that the surgical bug would eventually pull me back. I think after four years in general practice I can safely say that the move was one of the best decisions I have made.

I had always aimed at doing surgery, and three and a half years into senior house officer posts I was on a good rotation and had achieved the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. But osteogenesis was winning. In the days of open cholecystectomies we used to guess the patient's weight by how many fingers I broke holding the liver retractor. I was furious on one occasion during my accident and emergency job when my boss sent me home after I broke my toe, in my view a minor injury. The final straw was a fracture round my elbow early in a three day weekend on call. Over a cup of coffee with my …