Tony Joy talks emergency medicine
A couple of months ago I thanked Jackie for telling us a bit about her journey to becoming the Chief Executive of RLH - it clearly backfired because she responded by inviting me to do something similar! So I’m grateful for the invitation, and I look forward to hearing other guest editor’s stories in future newsletters.
I’ve been a consultant in Emergency Medicine here at RLH since 2015. If I look back at my junior doctor years, I can say with confidence that I don’t think I’d be an Emergency Physician if I hadn’t specifically come to work here as a Senior House Officer. I was inspired by remarkable medical and nursing colleagues who were so unapologetically forthright in fighting as a team to deliver the best in emergency care. This week, some of the ED Wellbeing team produced a great short video and its lovely to see how strongly that sense of ‘team’ permeates through in different people's comments. This togetherness is recognisable at Barts Health right from the coalface to the boardroom and is something I feel especially proud and excited to be part of.
My medical school (Sheffield) years were just brilliant, an excess of sports and socialising, and punctuated by failure of most exams including my finals. I wasn’t focussed on becoming a doctor and considered applying for different courses (journalism/politics/philosophy). It took a couple of ‘getting back on the horse’ experiences for me to learn that I was able and interested enough to continue in medicine. I wouldn’t change those formative experiences for anything and am absolutely convinced that they have made me a more inquisitive, empathetic and compassionate clinician.
My area of particular interest is exploring how we can deliver brilliant care outside of the hospital setting. London’s Air Ambulance has been a world-leading innovator in prehospital trauma care and celebrates it’s 30th anniversary this year. In the last few years we have collaboratively developed the Physician Response Unit (PRU) as a Community Emergency Medicine service, ‘taking the ED to the patient’. It is a rare privilege to go into people’s homes, offices, schools etc and turn anywhere into a consulting space. Moreover it is making myself and the other members of the team much more holistic clinicians, helping us to understand the community that we serve, and perhaps seeing individuals much more as ‘people’ not patients. It’s not that common for hospital-based healthcare workers to get to visit patients outside of the site facilities but it helps to understand why people seek emergency healthcare, and how they navigate the complex and sometimes cumbersome systems (be that calling 999 or 111, walking in to the ED, or accessing their GP).
I’d encourage anyone just to take the occasional walk around the local community, and appreciate the wonderful diversity, the social and economic challenges, the difficulties and vulnerabilities that some of our population face, and the significant role we play in colouring the community landscape.
Tony Joy
Consultant in Emergency Medicine
Royal London and Mile End Hospitals