A Day In The Life Of A Doctor | Gp Across Clinics, Healthtech & Youtube

So I've seen my patients, that's job number one done. I'm now headed to a wee work to start my afternoon on my health tech job. Let's go! I'm Catherine, I'm a GP, I work in health tech and I run this channel. Here's how I actually balance all three, starting with day one. I get up and ready at 7 o'clock when my cat Pepe also joins me. I then head downstairs and prepare myself some breakfast. Today is super simple with some toast and peanut butter. I'm going for a run later so I want some carbs in me for fuel. It's then time to feed the king of the house who never fails to show off his only trick which is sitting on command but only if I'm right about to feed him. I then take 10 to 15 minutes to meditate. Lately I've been really enjoying these guided meditations from Tara Brach. I save a number from her podcast in a Spotify playlist so they're ready to go. A tip if you meditate off podcasts like me, set the sleep timer to end of episode so you're not jolted by the next one auto-playing. So I'm just about to log on for the day. As you can tell I'm working from home today. It's super nice to be able to work from home. It's not great to do it all the time but just to be able to have that flexibility of a few days a week I think really really enhances my week. In terms of the schedule for today, so I'm working in the morning in my health tech job and I've got a couple of meetings and a couple of tasks that I need to get done before lunchtime. Then during the lunch break I am going to go for a run. In the afternoon I'm actually going to film a couple of YouTube videos for the channel. You can probably recognize this background so this is the guest bedroom where I work and I also film. What you can't see is that behind the camera is a load of mess. There's also a wall bed here because it's also a yeah the guest bedroom. For those of you who are actually new to my channel and have no idea what I do in health My job title is a clinical product owner. If you want to learn more about what a clinical product manager does I've got a video which talks about the different pillars of types of health tech jobs that are available for clinicians. In a nutshell though I work as a translator between the engineers and the clinical team. So trying to translate the messy reality of the clinical world and understanding the needs of doctors and patients that use our product. What this actually looks like is that in these meetings it's trying to translate clinical knowledge both from my experience but also from guidelines and explaining it to the engineers in a way that we work together to try and get a clinically safe and a technically feasible solution whilst at the same time thinking about the needs of the company and all the other stakeholders around the decisions that we make. So you know the commercial team, the product managers, the designers and so on. After finishing my health tech work it's time to get ready for my run. We're lucky to have had quite a lot of sun in London this spring which means sun protection especially if it's a longer run. I try to plan my hydration and fuel beforehand as I've noticed this makes a huge difference. I'm currently training for a half marathon and I use an app called Runner. It's super handy all the runs sync straight to my watch so I just have the hard work of following the paces. I protect time for exercise at least four times a The benefits to my physical and mental health are immeasurable. I find it especially useful as a reset between different types of work, between work and switching off or as energy boost at the start of the day. It stops everything from blurring together. I feel super lucky that in London there are so many amazing running routes and parks. When I get home I make a quick simple lunch of salmon and broccoli. I marinate them both in olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder then stick it in the air fryer for 10 minutes. This literally takes 15 minutes to both prep and cook. I'm now moving on to the filming part of the day so I've come back from a run, showered, eaten lunch. I just need to get the room ready for filming so what this involves is making sure the lighting's right so I'll close all the curtains and turn on this big studio light, clean up the desk a bit, set up the camera and make sure that I'm comfortable to start. There are a few reasons why I've decided to spend more time on YouTube. I'm learning quite a lot just by planning the videos. I also really enjoy sharing information through this medium. I feel like with my background as a GP but also wanting to scratch a creative itch, YouTube is a really good space for me to scratch both those itches at the same time. And finally I think what is probably the most important thing is that I'm trying to produce the videos that I wish I had seen when I was younger in my career, when I was a junior doctor or a resident doctor. This is the information I wish I'd had and it gives me a lot of fulfillment to produce this type of content. In the evening I head to the Royal Society of Medicine for a debate on the motion this house believes AI will radically change the role of the doctor. There was a big swing in the room. The audience started in favor and ended up against. The debate ended up being more about the semantics of the motion, most of it being centered on the human elements of being a clinician which everyone agreed AI won't replace. Day two starts with a clinical shift so it's a slightly earlier start. After my morning clinic it's straight back into my health tech job so I also bring my laptop along. I find it difficult to eat when it's too early in the morning so for my clinical shifts I always prepare a box of overnight oats to bring with me to eat. I get into clinic 10 minutes before it starts, both to feel mentally prepared but often because that is how long it takes me to even get into the computer system. At 8am my clinic starts which is a majority of face-to-face patients and telephone triage from 111. So it's 10 o'clock, it's two hours into the clinic. I've got a I think five, ten minute break before the next patient comes in so I'm going to take the opportunity to eat the breakfast that I packed. It kind of looks quite gross in this container because it's been sort of shaken about my backpack but it tastes better than it looks. The morning has been quite challenging actually so far. I would say one of the big challenges but also the joy of being a GP is that literally any type of patient can walk into my door and I don't really know what to expect every time I show up to a clinical shift. In a GP setting we don't have things like blood tests or even the ability to continuously monitor a patient over a period of time so you get a more sense of what their clinical picture is like. This makes the job a lot more challenging because there's a lot more uncertainty that you have to be able to handle and grapple with and I think handling uncertainty is definitely something that does get easier with time through training and through experience but it's definitely a skill that needs to be developed and something that I've learned to be more and more comfortable with as a GP. I use a few specific techniques to handle uncertainty. In the early stages of an illness symptoms can be vague so my priority in the consultation room is to rule out the serious illnesses. Oftentimes a combination of watchful waiting to see how the patient's symptoms evolve over time paired with safety netting giving them a specific list of red flag symptoms is the best approach. At 12 o'clock I move on to completing some admin. I also quickly check my portfolio. I'm nearly at the 34 patient responses I need for my anonymous feedback survey which is great to see. So I've now finished seeing my morning patients. I've just eaten my lunch whilst hopping on the first call of my health tech job. I need to properly transition from GP to health tech right now so I'm just going to wrap up my morning clinic make sure I've sent all my referrals that my notes are in a decent state and then I'm actually going to go to a co-working space this afternoon to have a bit of a change in environment and then spend the afternoon doing my health tech job. After a brisk 30 minute walk I arrive at this free work which has the most incredible view especially on a sunny day like today. Changing working environment in between jobs really helps me with my focus levels. A new scene gives me a reset and helps my brain shift gears. This afternoon I'm working on a conference presentation that I'm delivering in a couple of weeks so it's research and deep focus mode for a few hours powered by lots of cups of tea. It's just past five o'clock and I think I'm going to head home soon. Still got a bit of work to do so I might just work on the train. It was a pretty intense busy day. I would say the morning clinic probably one of my more challenging ones. Quite a few patients coming in with seemingly quite bread and butter GP stuff you know suspected UTI, back pain, viral illnesses but then all of them had something in their history which made their presentation more complex. It takes a while for me to go through their notes and really understand their medical history so that I can give an appropriate management plan. It's quite interesting in the afternoon when I switch to my health tech job because the way I think about problems in the health tech job is quite different to when I'm in the clinic one-on-one with the patient. This took me quite a while to get used to when I first transitioned in health tech because although on the surface it looks like okay you're just using your clinical expertise to make decisions and they both should require the same style thinking in reality when I'm with a patient in clinic I'm making that decision specifically for that patient. It's one-on-one, it's very tailored whereas when I'm making decisions on my health tech job this product is going to potentially touch you know hundreds of thousands if not more patients and so the way that I think about decisions and weigh up pros and cons and think about trade-offs is quite different. When doing clinical products work like I do you really have to zoom out and think at scale and think okay would this decision be good enough for most patients and what kind of patients or edge cases do I need to think about and not forget about then how do we think about scaling up clinical safety to a large group of patients rather than just the patient in front of you but anyway I think the two ways of thinking and using my brain are both super interesting and yeah I find it super fulfilling to be able to dip my toes in both styles. Once I get home I have a quick snack though Pepe thinks that it's for him too and that's it! That's how I balance clinics, health tech, and this channel. If you're wondering how I got into health tech check out this video here and for another day in the life vlog check out this video. Thanks for spending the day with me, see you in the next one!