An accidental career, across eight specialties.

At sixteen, a friend dared me to apply to medical school. I had no plan and no particular passion for medicine. I said yes because saying no felt worse. Thirty years later I can tell you that accidental choice produced a career no planned one would have.

I've worked across eight medical specialties — general practice, emergency medicine, intensive care, surgery, psychiatry, paediatrics, cardiothoracics, and a stint as a ship's surgeon at sea. I'm still in practice. What that range gives me is a view specialist training rarely produces: the connections the system misses. How the mind holds on in the body. How the sleep a person isn't getting becomes the chest pain you saw on Thursday. How the ten-minute appointment can't see any of it.

Why I write this

The ten-minute appointment is a miracle of efficiency and a failure of medicine at the same time. A good doctor can get a lot done in ten minutes. A good conversation, usually, is not one of them. This is where I have the conversation I didn't have time to finish with you in clinic.

Every piece here is earned. Most begin with a patient — anonymised, details changed — and end with a lesson. Some begin with a moment from surgery, or the ICU, or a ship in open water. Some sit with what we don't know, because the honest answer often is: we're not sure.

What you'll find here

• Stories from eight specialties — told plainly, with the lesson at the end.
• Patient cases, anonymised and changed, with the transferable takeaway.
• Connections the specialist system misses — mind and body, sleep and heart, isolation and immunity.
• Evidence cited. Uncertainty admitted. British English, always.
• A weekly letter. The same writing, in your inbox on a Sunday.

What you won't find here

• Clickbait urgency. Hype words. Rage-quoting headlines.
• Personalised medical advice. This is not the place for that — see a clinician who can examine you.
• Sponsorships, supplements, or miracle protocols.
• The doctor as persona. I'd rather be a person who happens to be a doctor.

Credentials

MBBS, MRCGP. Thirty years of clinical practice across eight specialties. Full name available on request, and shown on every video on the YouTube channel.