Summary

Kay opens Chapter 2 notifying the reader that he has been promoted to Senior House Officer, but although there is a different title, there is no financial promotion. Kay suspects the new title is just to “give patients a bit of confidence” in the doctor (30). This is the time that doctors choose what they will specialize in. Kay describes the different areas of medicine one can enter into, and tells the reader that he decided on obstetrics and gynecology, happy that “you end up with twice the number of patients you started with” (32). However, he did not take the decision lightly, remarking that it took him months to make up his mind as it was the most “significant life decision” he made since he chose to go to medical school at eighteen (33).

During his first week working on the labor...