About David
Former consultant at RIE
David spent his first year working as a doctor at the hospital. In the picture, David is standing at the back of the former ward 12, where he worked for part of his first year. Currently it is one of the office spaces in wing A of the building.
Welcome to the Ward
Being a ‘real doctor’ began at the Royal Infirmary in the 1970s on the 1st of August, six weeks after graduation. The day was exciting yet daunting. There had been no formal orientation or introduction to the unit although, as I had been attached there as a student, I knew a little of what to expect. On that Thursday morning, with stethoscope, tendon hammer and notebook stuffed into the pockets of my new doctor’s white coat, I walked nervously onto the female ward of the medical unit where I would spend most of the hours of my next three months. The same sense of trepidation possessed me as on my first day at Medical School––palms a little damp, heart beating faster than usual, wanting to melt into the background.
The ward was of the old Florence Nightingale style––a long, high-ceilinged pavilion, with a row of twelve beds on each side; a wide central corridor extending to the far end; two single-bedded cubicles adjacent to the ward’s entrance; and a nurses’ station in the centre of the ward. Occupants of the beds were mostly old, some asleep, some eating breakfast as if in slow motion from trays on bed tables, some just staring into the void. The burden of being their doctor suddenly descended on me.
I must have been early as no other doctors were around. Not really knowing what to do, I thought I should introduce myself to the nursing staff and so made my way to the nurses’ station in the centre of the ward where several nurses were gathered. The Sister-in-Charge, seeing an interloper in a white coat venture into her territory, made a beeline towards me, her shoes clip-clopping with speed across the polished wooden boards.
“Och, you’d be Dr Campbell, then?” she demanded. Where she got that name from, I didn’t know. She could not have confused me with my fellow house officer on the male ward, because his surname also was not Campbell. Before I could correct her, she launched into a tirade, wagging her long, pointed finger at me, making it clear that she, not the medical staff, was in charge of the ward, the patients, the nurses and, of course, the house officers. This only served to increase my first-day anxiety. My heart sank as I realised I was going to have to somehow work with this woman for the next few months until I changed over to the male ward.
“It’s Dr Francis, actually,” I said, hardly daring to disagree with her, but she had already turned and headed back to the nurses’ station. I had seen from her name badge that she was ‘Sister A. MacDonald’. Only later did it occur to me that perhaps she was a Scottish matriarch who had not forgiven the Campbell clan for their treachery towards a group of her may-be ancestors at Glencoe some three centuries previously, and that her error may have provided her with a brief moment of revenge.
David Francis
Written for Edinburgh International Book Festival’s initiative Words from the Wards
