Breaking & Mending: A junior doctor’s stories of compassion & burnout

Abstract

Joanna Cannon entered medicine at a later age, she worked in a number of specialties as a junior doctor before moving into psychiatry. While working in the NHS she began penning her first novel, which became a bestseller. This book feels very different to those she’s written in the past, because unlike her other books she can’t hide behind fictitious storylines, these words are real and this story is her own. Most occupational health practitioners started their careers in the hospital wards, many of us will see healthcare workers on a daily basis, their livelihood involves the same work that we once did. Some of us may have forgotten what it’s like to tread through the hospital corridors in the dead of the night. I have felt my heart sink on a number of occasions when I’ve heard comments such as: ‘it’s not as bad as it used to be,...