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Back Going Under Save as PDF
Chapters (70)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART I BIRTH
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. PART II LIFE
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. TWENTY-ONE
  28. TWENTY-TWO
  29. TWENTY-THREE
  30. TWENTY-FOUR
  31. TWENTY-FIVE
  32. TWENTY-SIX
  33. TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. TWENTY-NINE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. PART III DEATH
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. FORTY-TWO
  50. FORTY-THREE
  51. FORTY-FOUR
  52. FORTY-FIVE
  53. FORTY-SIX
  54. FORTY-SEVEN
  55. FORTY-EIGHT
  56. FORTY-NINE
  57. FIFTY
  58. FIFTY-ONE
  59. FIFTY-TWO
  60. FIFTY-THREE
  61. FIFTY-FOUR
  62. FIFTY-FIVE
  63. FIFTY-SIX
  64. FIFTY-SEVEN
  65. FIFTY-EIGHT
  66. FIFTY-NINE
  67. SIXTY
  68. EPILOGUE
  69. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thirty-three years ago, Toby Henderson was working in the emergency department of a hospital on the outskirts of the city …

AUTHOR’S NOTE

author’s note

In 1978 the satirical novel The House of God was published, written by Samuel Shem, a psychiatrist who detailed the intern year of a group of young doctors at a fictional hospital. The novel describes the dehumanising, brutalising experiences of interns training at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Hospital in 1974. It was drawn from real life and, more than forty years later, is still part of medical folklore. It is now 2019, and this is a conversation that still hasn’t ended.

In January 2017 an anonymous article was published on the physician blog Kevin MD called ‘There is something rotten inside the medical profession’. It was shared thousands of times. It detailed the dire state of training for junior doctors, and a recent spate of suicides of young medics working in Australia. I had particular interest in the overwhelming response to this article as I was the doctor who wrote it.

I remember vividly sitting inside the emergency department as a friend told me that a colleague of ours had just killed herself. I remember the whispers and seeing people crying around the hospital. I also remember that, aside from among my close friends, I couldn’t discuss it with anyone and I had to put on a brave face and finish my shift that night. It was the second suicide of a doctor I knew within twelve months. A few weeks later, another doctor killed himself. All of these people were under the age of thirty-five, and all based in Sydney.

I walked home and poured my anger onto the notes function of my iPhone, which ended up being published as the aforementioned article. The sense of disillusionment was overwhelming. There is something wrong when young people with a qualification as difficult as a medical degree, who have the skills and intellect to contribute to society in an enormously meaningful way, are pushed into a mental space where they think their only option is to take their own life. Every year in America four hundred physicians kill themselves. That’s an entire medical school. I refuse to believe the apologists who infer there are other reasons for such drastic actions. There is a common denominator in all of these deaths: the job, and the system in which we train.