Find this title with Libby, the award-winning and much-loved app for local libraries, by OverDrive. While I am personally not inclined to take any sides in such conflicts without a more complete understanding of the situation, I am nevertheless appalled by the Health Secretary’s avoidance of frank conversations with the people whom his policies will most directly affect. The unjust connotations that made the lapse in patient safety seem like the fault of junior doctors were also deeply disturbing.

I feared that, if my hours and workload continued as they were, I might fail to cling onto the one thing that had driven me into medicine in the first place: my compassion.As Clarke shares some of the traumatic experiences she went through in understaffed hospital shifts, I am moved by her longing to do the best for her patients—a worthy desire which is constantly being thwarted by the long hours and an impossible workload. She describes herself running between wards, frenzied and sleep-deprived, trying to stay sane while not letting her mounting frustration get in the way of treating patients with kindness and respect. Why does the Almighty not reserve times for judgment? Why may those who know Him never see His days? In the Sunday Times best-selling Your Life in My Hands, Rachel depicts life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. A heartfelt, deeply personal memoir that is both a powerful polemic on the degradation of Britain's most vital public institution and a love letter of hope and optimism to that same health service. Many always dream of being a nurse or a doctor specialising in specific areas of medicine, but no-one prepares you for the real life on the front line that is looking after patients and dealing with the most traumatic moments that only a doctor can experience. Every patient is different, not every patient is understanding some can be rather rude. We ask a lot of doctors and what they have to except. Rachel’s accounts in her book are very eloquent and her writing style means that she comes across as though she there with you talking directly you. Just like a doctor in fact.

This memoir of the first wave of Covid will, I predict, be read a century from now as one of the best eyewitness accounts of what happened in the nation's wards in 2020. But it is no less important that it be read now, as a riveting, heart-wrenching testimony from the front line . . . Clarke writes with grace and empathy about her patients and colleagues . . . A must-read -- Matthew D'Ancona, Tortoise MediaEllicott's Commentary for English Readers(15) My times are in thy hand-- i.e., the vicissitudes of human life (LXX. and Vulg. have "my destinies") are under Divine control, so that the machinations of the foe cannot prevail against one whom God intends to deliver. For the expression comp. 1Chronicles 29:30, "the times that went over him," Isaiah 33:6. This book has also allowed me to see that medicine is essentially inseparable from politics. No matter how much doctors wish to be independent, they still fall under the subjugation of government bureaucracy and their choices are still influenced by political imperatives. Clarke is a superb storyteller as well as a clear-eyed polemicist . . . she writes with such compassion and humanity that you feel you are in the room . . . Clarke is certainly on the side of the angels and she has produced much more than a snapshot. Breathtaking is a beautiful, blistering account of a key moment in our history. If I were Boris Johnson, I wouldn't want to read it -- Christina Patterson ― Sunday Times The declining health of our loved ones is a predicament that none of us want to face. Knowing that there will always be a system in place to take care of them is a comforting assurance. Therefore, continuing to uphold the values of the NHS while not subjecting its workers to further stress will provide the crucial anchorage for a better future. Who would I recommend this book to?