Scrubbed

 Scrubbed

Reviewed By  Grasshopper2       August 22, 2022

 

Author  Dr Nikki Stamp

Distributor:      Allen & Unwin
ISBN:                 9781760879419
Publisher:         Allen & Unwin
Release Date:   May 2022  

Website:    https://www.allenandunwin.com 

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A heart surgeon’s extraordinary memoir of life, death and everything in between

Scrubbed: What an interesting and thought-provoking story. Nikki Stamps memoir stands out as a piece of writing that hopefully will change many aspects of the medical and health professions. Why it is acceptable to work young people to the point of exhaustion day after day and to ignore bullying and sexist treatments?  We expect the highest regard and treatment from our medical practitioners, and yet treat them so badly during their training.

As a child Nikki was enthralled by the idea of becoming a doctor. Her School Library had a collection of books on the human body which she read so avidly that she memorized body parts and their functions. Her studies in the future would be geared around her vision.

At medical school she was the one who got there early and left late, absorbing all she could from her colleagues and teachers. As a Medical Student working on the wards, she discovered that she was at the bottom of the pecking order, and the experienced nurses could help enormously.

The young medical student had always aspired to working in orthopaedics until she was asked to scrub up for a heart surgery. Then, suddenly her pathway changed and all she could think about was how to become a heart surgeon. The highly competitive field of cardiac surgery provided to be a greater challenge than Nikki could have imagined. She ignored the sexism, abuse and exhaustion and continued to pursue her dream. She achieved her goal.

Nikki Stamp’s story is very easy to read and compelling to finish. She writes simply and yet with feeling. There is a diagram to show the career path a surgeon must take and she poses questions for the reader to ponder. Once you begin her story it is hard to put down and also hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to walk away from this career.

Health, Non Fiction