The Main Issues in "Trust Me I’m a Junior Doctor" By Max Pemberton
Trust Me I’m a Junior doctor, by doctor Max Pemberton, is one of the interesting books that shows a year in the life of a junior doctor, it also introduces medical students to the career and gives them a small brief about it. It was first published in 2008 and it contains 12 chapters which are the 12 months of his first-year practicing medicine. The book includes many issues and cases that he had to work on and this book report will discuss two of them which are MRSA and breast cancer.
Bacteria lives all around us and even inside us. One of the harmless bacteria that lives on our skins is called MRSA which stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that became resistant to the penicillin-based drug methicillin. Mrs. Sheppard is a patient who had a tumor removal surgery, after the surgery everything was going alright; her wound was healing perfectly and she started to walk around the ward. All of a sudden, she deteriorated and her wound began to open. Her body refused to respond to any of the treatments and she was diagnosed with MRSA; the bacteria got inside her open wound and caused serious-hard to treat infection that led to her death.
MRSA is also known as “super bug” because certain antibiotics such as penicillin and amoxicillin cannot kill it. These bacteria are everywhere and people who are colonized with MRSA shouldn’t always be infected with it, they are MRSA carriers. These bacteria can be found in large amounts in livestock specially pigs, poultry and cattle, it is transmitted by direct contact, eating meat, or environmental contamination. The other main cause of MRSA is hospitals and its staff, studies showed that 4. 6%; 5. 1% out of 33 318 screened healthcare workers had clinical infections and the infection can transmit to patients at a percentage of 93%. The infection caused by MRSA can infect the lungs, blood, skin and urinary tract which can be life-threatening if not treated immediately after seeing the first symptom.
Another issue discussed in the book is breast cancer and how it can spread in the body. In his book, Dr. Max tells us the story of a patient called Mrs. Stoffels who had a radiotherapy and a surgery to get her breast cancer removed, she was told that she is now cancer free and it is all clear. A few years later the cancer came back yet, this time it was in her lungs and liver. She had chemotherapy over the summer but the cancer continued to grow and reached her gullet. It was too late to treat, therefore, all they did was reduce the pain. Unfortunately, Mrs. Stoffels passed away and the doctors could not do anything to help her. Cancer is a disease caused by the uncontrolled division and growth of abnormal cells. If it is breast cancer, it results in a tumor that can be seen by an x-ray or felt as a lump in the breast. Breast cancer occurs in both women and men, but it is more likely to attack women and is the second cause of cancer deaths in women. There are many risk factors of breast cancer and the main one is age. The risk increases with age: at age 20 the risk is 0. 6 percent while at age 70 it is 3. 84 percent. Genetics, obesity and alcohol consumption are some of many other risk factors. The symptoms of this disease can be clearly seen as lump in the breast, rashes on the nipple, pain in the armpits or blood coming out of the nipple. Cancer is a hard to treat disease and the treatments vary depending on the stage of cancer. The most common and known cure is chemotherapy but there are some other treatments such as radiation therapy, surgery, hormone therapy and targeted drug therapy.
In conclusion, Trust Me I’m a Junior doctor by Dr. Max Pemberton gives us the sense of how it feels to be a junior doctor while also providing us with medical knowledge. The book includes a variety of issues. The ones discussed in this book report are breast cancer and MRSA. MRSA are bacteria that are generally harmless, but can be harmful in specific conditions. The other issue is breast cancer which is a type of cancer that mainly attacks women and can be treated if it does not reach a late stage. The book in general is an engaging book that people who are not in the field of medicine would also like.
