VOCATION: Training to fight on the NHS frontline (Vocation Resuscitation Resignation Book 1)

Tony McCluskey enters a six-year training programme to work on the NHS frontline with youthful enthusiasm, though his first patient is already deceased. Medical school lessons prove inadequate preparation for the reality of hospital work: 100-hour weeks, life-and-death decisions, and constant exposure to bodily fluids. The relentless pressure of long hours, sleepless nights, and dealing with death and dying takes a toll. When Tony is accused of causing a patient's death, his sense of vocation transforms into something far more difficult. Vocation is the first book in a series documenting Tony's forty-year medical career. It covers his time at medical school, on hospital wards, and in operating theatres, presenting the emotional reality of junior hospital doctor life—including its sorrow and joy, tragedy and triumph, mundanity and absurdity, horror and hilarity. The account offers an insight into working on the NHS frontline.