in·ter·view /ˈintərˌvyo͞o/ Noun A meeting of people face to face, esp. for consultation.

I saw my registrar with cocaine did I? What do I do? Well of course this is a delicate situation and requires the utmost of tact and so initially, I would do would want to seek more information and… WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?? IS THAT EVEN A FUCKING THING? DOES THIS EVER EVEN REALLY HAPPEN??

Interview are the worst aren’t they? Sat in some pretentious hotel in Leeds, which thinks it’s in London, but is actually in Leeds and where the hell is that anyway (doesn’t the world stop north of Birmingham?) is one of the most artificial situations we can put ourselves through in life and is only compounded when Mr Nose Hair (does he know what nose hair clippers are?) who is barely registering the words coming out of your mouth, asks you what you would do if you found your registrar with cocaine?

You mean besides asking him to share it with me? You mean besides thinking about what sort of moron brings class A substances into the Doctor’s Mess and sits them up alongside a homemade ham and cheese sandwich? You mean besides wondering what kind of idiot is caught by me, hardly Colombo, who is more likely to be caught startled under the sudden revelation that he has fingers, than notice his registrar is carrying more talcum powder than usual? What would I do?

I know, I know, that this is an exercise in principles and not product. I understand we are being assessed on our cognitive process as opposed to what ever contextual rubbish that happens to tumble out of our mouths. Of course I would act professionally and appropriately, but what importance does that carry in an interview situation? Do you think my ability to phrase answers coherently, in a systematic manner reflects my ability to think in the same way and simultaneously remove your tonsils? Of course not. This is simply a game, an act, and I am left wondering who has actually being fooled. Us, the interviewees for playing the mindless dirge or the interviewers for tapping their feet along so tunelessly.

Good interviews do not always reflect good doctors. Good doctors do not always give good interviews. Perhaps I am being shortsighted and don’t know of any statistics to say otherwise, but I feel the selection process has been incontrovertibly tainted by awarding marks for whatever clown gives the best performance on the night. I cannot be the only one who feels that surgical aptitude should be based upon a subjective review over time and not over 6 stations in the city of Leeds, who do not even have a premiership football team and who’s greatest output has been an ENT registrar who spent most of his first year, on the phone, simultaneously walking and talking into a wall with genuine zeal. Seriously, I know that guy.

frus·trat·ed /ˈfrəsˌtrātid/ Adjective Feeling or expressing distress and annoyance, esp. because of inability to change or achieve something. (of a person) Unable to follow or be successful in a particular career.

Is about how I feel at the moment. I have not run in what seems and on closer inspection, is close to two months; a result of some dynamic right sided knee pain which manifests itself in a variety of different forms. Today I can barely sit, the numbness taunting me from within my buttocks. It is literally a pain in the arse.

To be honest, I should probably begin running again, in some form or other, dragging myself around the cemented streets of West London. The reason for my abstinence is due to an impending application for an ever elusive Ears, Nose and Throat Surgical Training job. This has been on my mind for some time now. And honey roasted cashews. In equal quotients.

Let me elaborate. Surgical training in the UK is a convoluted affair, where after acknowledging the ability to drink till one is suitably blind, one leaps from medical school into the wretched arms of foundation training, extending a misery of two years until some doting bastard with a pen in his hand puts a mark next to your name suggesting you might be good for something other than auditing how many patients are using newspapers to wipe their collective arses with and offers you a basic surgical training position where you spend a further two years emailing pointless forms to each and every one of your colleagues until either they, or you or both are wailing in a corner rocking back and forth under the impending administrative assault on your souls and/or Islam and at some point, round about now, you apply for what is called National Selection, the holiest of grails in the surgical training calendar.

Last year, I came within touching distance of this job, falling just short of requirement, but not of expectation – being the suitably inept human I am. I like to think of myself as the anti-Indiana Jones. You remember where he’s being chased by an Arab (they’re always Arabs) through some evil ancient erection (snigger) and he’s approaching a closing trap door and every single part of you wants to see him fail just so you can see the look on his face as his body is crushed into a smug little mess in Arabia (is that a place?) but he doesn’t because he’s Harrison Ford and he has a deal with Spielberg over 3 films and his hat comes off and just in the dying seconds of the scene, he steals it from a likely lonely existence, in the cave with Omid Djalili? You remember?

In my scene, I am cut down where I stand. As the scene closes, my arm is left convulsing in a darkened pit where it has been amputated. The interviewers reach down and pick up the hat marked “ENT ST3” on it and walk off into a refrain with Beelzebub laughing. Bastards.