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The first winter storm and saying goodbye 😥

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During my final week we experienced the first winter gales. The wind got up to storm force 11 on the Beaufort Scale (for all you nautical weather geeks). The Aberdeen ferry was cancelled for 24 hours which resulted in some quite amusing Facebook posts about the usual and totally unnecessary panic buying in the local shops. Here is a Facebook photo of the last ferry to leave before the next one was cancelled 🤢 And my consulting room visibility was not so great…. The locals are quite used to such winds and gave me some useful car door advice. Apparently many a car door has been blown off by the winter storms. The locals have learnt to park the car facing into the wind to avoid this though it can make it tricky to get out of the car in the first place. It makes you wonder how the local people spend their winters and the answer is they are very sociable and have a real sense of community spirit. The annual “Up Helly Aa” Viking festival provides a distraction in the short dark days - group...
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Getting in to it

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It’s the end of my first full week.  Here are some reflections.  My stress levels are settling to a more manageable level and I’ve started to enjoy the daytime work. I actually have time to spend with patients and give them the input they need. I have time to ask about lifestyle and do a bit of health promotion - who’d have thought it?! I can deal with the associated clinical admin, and not feel totally fried at the end of a day at the surgery. Time pressure and it’s related stress is not really a thing here. Don’t get me wrong though, my blood pressure still goes through the roof when the on-call phone goes off! I got out for a short walk before work on one of the few calm days here (according to the nurses the wind blows about 364 days a year on Unst). It was so tranquil and idyllic. We saw a couple of seals enjoying the glassy sea conditions too. It was a shame I didn’t have time to join them for a dip.  The Unst population seems an accident prone lot. I’m not sure wha...
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First weekend on call

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I had 6 calls over the first weekend varying from “I forgot to collect my essential meds on Friday afternoon, can I come and get them now?” 🙄 to “my child has anaphylaxis to prawns and they’ve just eaten scampi” 🙄🙄🙄… I was just sitting down to a fish and chip supper in the local community hall when this call came through! Thankfully this was headed off with a hefty dose of antihistamines and I managed to get back and finish my delicious fish and chip supper which had been kept warm for me. The cold onion rings weren’t quite so tasty.  Every now and again a group of local people organise events such as the “Fish and Chip Night”  which are hugely popular with the local families. From what I could see, several generations of families attend together and there’s a real sense of community. Word obviously got round that I was the current doctor and a saw a few familiar faces (patients mainly!). A rumour was circulating generated by one of the receptionists Mum’s that my husband,...
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Northern Exposure

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View from my consulting room  First day.  After 3 days of shadowing and probably being quite annoying to Mike, the outgoing GP, it was time to hand over full responsibility to me. It was a Thursday morning, and we met at Unst Health Centre at half eight for a relaxed handover. The idea is that the outgoing locum can then leave by 10am to head to Lerwick on the main island, for the evening ferry back to Aberdeen.  He had helpfully written a list of concerning patients and follow up plans which was very useful, as within a few days I had been in touch with quite a number of them.  The car keys and controlled drugs were all signed over to me, and I kid you not, by 9.03am the doorbell goes with a patient saying “It’s an emergency, I’ve chopped my thumb off.” Thankfully Mike was still in the building and was able to guide me through my first ever case as the island’s GP!  A 23 year old man who was working on Unst but resident down in Lerwick had arrived in his lorry ...
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Arrival and anxiety!

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There’s so much to say, it’s hard to know where to start. It takes 14 and a half hours overnight on a ferry to travel the distance from Aberdeen to Lerwick, Shetland. It’s a very long way. An easterly swell during the first half of the night meant I took to my bed very early and I was quickly regretting the slap up dinner we had soon after boarding. However, after a decent sleep we arrived in Lerwick at 7.30 in the morning. After wandering around for a bit as nothing was open and taking the obligatory photo of the beach featured next to Jimmy Perez’s house from the “Shetland “ crime series we grabbed a coffee and headed over to the Island of Whalsay.  Another ferry ride later and I was chatting to the current GP locum and practice manager (I probably only understood about 1/2 of what she said due to her Shetland dialect which came as a bit of a shock!) to get the low down on GP work in a remote and rural environment. The consulting room view was just incredible: We then drove to Un...
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Shetland minus one week

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A week before we left to travel north, in order to prepare myself for being on a Scottish Island I thought, let’s cycle The Hebridean Way.  A 220 mile bike ride over 5 days: 10 islands, 6 causeways and 2 ferries.  I checked the weather forecast - no storms predicted so we booked it all at the last minute (apparently it’s more normal to plan this trip a good few months in advance due to sparsity of accommodation) so with a lot of naivety and luck we’ve had the most incredible 5 days of cycling. We stayed in a variety of places including a hostel which turned out to be a converted old people’s home (best nights sleep all week 😂) and a wooden grass hut.  The sun shone. We ate lots of cake and had some amazing coffee. We saw plenty of wildlife, including an otter, a white tailed sea eagle and dolphins. In summary it’s quite the most beautiful place I have ever visited.  And also a very quick way to switch off from the stresses of being a GP in 2023.  As this is a m...
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Cannulae and counter-traction. Preparation part 2.

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Only a month to go until I leave to head North 😬 As part of my preparation for the remote single handed GP sabbatical role it was recommended that having some recent A&E experience would be helpful.  Gulp.  The last time I worked in A&E was in the ‘90s as a very green SHO just 18 months out of medical school. Whilst I loved the medicine, if you’ve seen or read “This is Going to Hurt” by the talented Adam Kay you’ll have an idea of where I’m coming from. Seven consecutive 12 hour night shifts where you were the only doctor in the department serving an entire county, was the norm. You had a consultant at home on the end of a phone. At times I found it terrifying and I think it probably traumatised my younger self. So I can’t tell you how different my recent experience of shadowing a Consultant in the local A&E department has been. This took some setting up, I naively assumed I could just pitch up having got the go ahead from the Medical Director of the department. N...
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