Question: is it hard to be a doctor

Emma Wellham answered on 9 Jun 2018:

I’m sure it is very hard to be a doctor, but i’m not actually a doctor, i’m a cardiac scientist or cardiac physiologist. There are lots and lots of different jobs in the NHS that you might not have heard of, it’s not just doctors and nurses who work in hospitals!

To be a cardiac scientist there is a lot to learn about how the heart works, how pacemakers work, and what to do in an emergency. Doctors rely on us to do our job properly to help them when they are performing a procedure and to help them look after patients. We even run some pacemaker clinics by ourselves! The hardest part of the job is probably acting calmly and quickly without panicking in an emergency, as it is important that we do the right things as quickly as possible to save the patient. It’s also very hard if we don’t manage to save the patient, it can be very sad. But you have to think logically about it and know that you did everything you could to give the patient the best chance of surviving.