If you have trained for years to be competent at your job, it is very rewarding when you eventually get the opportunity to utilize all of your training to carry out your job. I feel that the terms passed at university have proven to be entirely worthwhile given that I am doing work which I know is a good thing for the community.

I love my job, but I need a holiday occasionally to take time out from the pressures of life. I don’t need to travel abroad, simply off into the sticks to enjoy a spot of hill walking. I adore being in the Lake District, far away from the hustle and bustle of the metropolis, just relaxing in the landscape. I don’t often have the opportunity to simply chill out; therefore I invariably switch off the phone in order that I am able to truly be free of the modern world. I have worked as a GP for 7 years, so I think I have seen it all.

You’ll get people that are in the surgery every few days, certain that they are going to drop dead of some terrible illness, and it does not make any difference how often you tell them they’ve got nothing serious, they simply won’t believe you. Also I’ve got the patients that I rarely meet, but will come along with an obviously serious problem and when I point out that they need an urgent intervention they will say they haven’t got any free days and want to know why I can’t simply chuck them some tablets to make them feel well again. Plus, needless to say, there are those people who come in requiring male impotence treatments, or possibly more seriously, Chlamydia treatment, however they can’t get the courage up to say it out loud thus they maybe pop in several times before the reality eventually appears. It’s quite a job.

Before now I had to take the car to work, and it was tremendously irritating when I wound up stuck in traffic for ages in the morning. That was an utter waste of time. As a result I elected to put my house on the market and move in to an apartment near to the surgery. It proved to be a great decision, because nowadays I merely walk in to the clinic in the mornings: it takes under fifteen minutes.