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Day in the Life as a Doctor

2019-12-06 · Vlog or day in the life · Ali · recording, 5:09 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Medicine and his doctor years (also: Learning and studying) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Sponsor segment present

On a Saturday on call during his old age psychiatry placement, Ali films a day as a junior doctor in Cambridge: ward jobs and long discharge letters between calls, studying cardiovascular physiology for the Cambridge medical students he supervises, and a nap cut short after five hours' sleep.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Getting up at 6.30, filming before work, the commute and the morning handover

  • ★★ Ali, a doctor working in Cambridge, films a day in his life: a Saturday on call at the hospital, for which he gets up at 6.30. — 00:00:00 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Before his on-call shift Ali films for 70 minutes, wishing he had scripted the video better; the footage becomes a 22-minute video titled How to rank first at medical school. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali drives 45 minutes to work; on the commute he listens to podcasts if he feels productive, to audiobooks on Audible if he feels lazy, or drives in silence with his thoughts if he feels reflective. — 00:00:29 · Audible
  • ★ At the 9am handover Ali gets a light list of jobs, a physical examination and a blood test, and hopes to get some studying done that day. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Ward jobs, breakfast, discharge letters, lunch and table tennis with colleagues

  • ★★ Between calls Ali writes discharge letters for patients who went home that week; on psychiatry these letters are super long and complicated, and he finishes two by 3.40pm. — 00:01:52
  • ★ Over lunch Ali chats with on-call colleagues from other specialties, and one of them joins him for about 20 minutes of table tennis in the hospital gym. — 00:01:52

00:02:21 — Studying physiology between calls, the interrupted nap, the textbook and the Alzheimer's documentary

  • ★★ With his on-call afternoon reasonably free, Ali studies lecture 4 of the heart and circulation series in human physiology, the subject he supervises medical students in at Cambridge University. — 00:02:21 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali loses concentration after about half an hour of studying because the early start to film left him only around 5 hours of sleep; his nap in the on-call room is cut short by calls. — 00:02:21
  • ★★ Back in the doctors' office, Ali spends half an hour on cardiovascular physiology and plans his teaching session for the medical students he supervises. — 00:02:51
  • ★★ Finding the cardiovascular physiology lecture notes do not make sense to him, Ali works through a PDF of a physiology textbook and thinks it a really good book he wishes he had found sooner. — 00:03:20
  • ★★ Ali is on his old age psychiatry placement, where he sees many patients with advanced Alzheimer's disease, which has made him really scared of getting it when he is older. — 00:03:49

00:04:00 — Sponsor read

  • ★ At 9pm Ali hands over to the evening on-call doctor with nothing outstanding, having done everything for the day. — 00:04:19

00:04:33 — Handover at 9pm and sign-off

  • ★★ Ali says he has not really made a day-in-the-life video before and asks viewers in the comments whether they want more of them or something else instead. — 00:04:48

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether his laid-back on-call day is the norm for doctors in the UK, the channel replies that it was psychiatry, a special case. — creator comment

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Mentioned

Alzheimer's disease · Audible · Cambridge · Psychiatry · University of Cambridge

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