I’m honoured to join medical volunteers
IN THE days following the Westminster attacks, I realised I finally had to do something I have been meaning to do for a long time: sign up as a volunteer doctor for St John Ambulance.
Seeing the incredible response from those on the scene, and the off-duty doctors who ran in the direction of the injured, inspired me and cemented my plans.
I always seem to be the doctor who is accidentally on hand at emergencies anyway.
A few years ago, on my on-call day in my GP surgery, I ended up crouched in the toilet delivering a woman’s baby on the floor.
Only a few weeks ago, it was me once again on the floor of a restaurant helping a woman who had fainted. My children joke that whenever we get on a flight, I don’t get to watch the film because I’m always helping someone who has fallen ill.
I love being a GP, but during training I worked in emergency medicine and found it hugely rewarding, particularly the teamwork and quick thinking.
I still get nervous, of course. But motherhood and 15 years’ experience of medicine have given me confidence, more than I had as a junior doctor, working in a busy A&E department.
I spend my whole week doing medicine, either in clinic or broadcasting, so it might seem rather overkill to want to spend my weekends volunteering to do the same. But medicine was always a vocation for me, and far more than just a job.
And I am hugely inspired by the volunteers, doctors and members of the public who have simply stepped up when circumstances demanded it, and whom I have had the honour to meet over the past few years thanks to the Everyday Hero Awards.