Author Event - Joanna Cannon Talk & Signing
Breaking & Mending - A junior doctor’s stories of compassion and burnout
Venue: The Collection Auditorium
Ticket Prices: Standard: £7 Single including book:£17 Couple including book: £20
Date: Friday 1 November 2019
Time: 7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)
We are joined by the bestselling fiction author of ‘The Trouble with Goats & Sheep’ and ‘Three Things about Elsie’ in a chaired event about her new memoir that tells her story as a junior doctor in visceral, heart-rending snapshots.
A few years ago, I found myself in A&E.
I had never felt so ill. I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, in fact, I hadn’t eaten properly or slept well, or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains, listening to the rest of the hospital happen around me. I knew I was an inch away from defeat, from the acceptance of a failure I assumed would be inevitable, but equally, I knew I had to carry on. I had to somehow walk through it.
Because I wasn’t the patient. I was the doctor.
In this powerful memoir, Joanna Cannon tells her story as a junior doctor in visceral, heart-rending snapshots.
We walk with her through the wards, facing extraordinary and daunting moments daily: from attending your first post-mortem to telling a patient you’re sorry. These moments teach her that emotional care and understanding mental health can be as critical as restoring a heartbeat.
In a profession where weakness remains a taboo, this moving, beautifully written and candid book brings to life the vivid, human stories of doctors, patients and the hospital, and shows us why we need to take better care of those who care for us.
Joanna Cannon is the author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, which was published in fifteen languages and the Sunday Times bestselling Three Things About Elsie, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Her novels have sold over half a million copies in the UK alone.
Jo’s love of narrative had always drawn her to psychiatry but it wasn’t until her thirties that she decided to go back to university to study medicine. Before specialising in psychiatry, she rotated through a series of hospital jobs, from A&E to palliative care. @JoannaCannon