Hello! My name is Janet Skinner, I graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 1994 (so probably before many of you were born…Argh!). I’m from Tranent in East Lothian and had it existed in the day, would probably have been a widening access student having gone to the Ross High School.
I was really lucky because both my parents and my teachers were really encouraging and invested in helping me get to medical school. One of my last rotations at medical school was in A&E which I fell in love with and went on to do emergency medicine training, becoming a consultant in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 2007.
Early in my registrar training I developed an interest in medical education and was lucky enough to be able to take some time out of my emergency medicine training to do a fellowship in medical education and a Masters. My job now is half time Director of Clinical Skills in Edinburgh Medical School and half time emergency medicine consultant….although to be honest it does often feel like two full time jobs!
Working in the NHS, particularly the emergency department, is pretty challenging at the moment. However, I wouldn’t change my speciality for the world as I still love working in a close knit team (#EDfamily) where everyone looks out for each other. If I can still enjoy nights at 50 then there is hope for everyone! Emergency medicine is not all about excitement and drama but much of my job satisfaction comes from trying to help patients and their relatives through what is often one of the worst times in their lives.
I found it quite hard to integrate into first year at medical school and had massive ‘imposter syndrome’ as I didn’t go to private school and often didn’t really feel like I fitted in. Living at home and travelling every day probably compounded this and I just scraped through the exams in first year. However, I found things much easier when we got into the clinical years and everyone went on placements in small groups which quickly meant that you got really close to your peers, despite different backgrounds and the cliques of the early years disappeared.
Keeping sane at medical school and while practising medicine isn’t always easy, so here’s two top tips from me:
1. Try not to live with all medics as they will do your head in at exam time
2. Keep up interests outside of medicine, and be kind to yourself. I read trashy books, do some water colour painting and fancy myself as a Masterchef contestant. Over first lockdown when work was really stressful I reignited a childhood love of Lego and am currently building a lego typewriter, having just completed the space shuttle discovery.
