It’s October. The rota coordinator is grinning smugly. Those months of swapping shifts for weddings and holidays are a mere figment of their imagination as this year, they will give themselves Christmas off.

A common payoff for nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals that sign up to coordinate rotas is that they can assign themselves to a warm house with family around them at Christmas and New Year. The question is, why do we as a profession find the thought of working at this time of the year so galling when, in reality, it can actually be the most uplifting time to be at work?

Last Christmas Day, I woke up at 6am. I put on a festive dress, and drove for an hour towards my place of work, leaving my family behind. I felt depressed and sorry for myself, while Facebook confirmed that several other friends were ranting about their poor fortunes too.

I walked through the doors and immediately a porter with a Santa hat wished me a merry Christmas. I mustered a smile and went to answer the dreaded bleep. On the way, everybody I passed, including patients in dressing gowns, seemed to stop me in my tracks and at the very least gave me a smile; all very American for a Londoner like myself. Thirteen hours and counting.

After a mildly amusing handover and tales of commiseration on how we were all so hard-done-by, I trotted off to the high dependency respiratory ward to check on the patients. On arrival, the domestic services staff were already preparing a special lunch for all the patients and their relatives; the nurses had tinsel in their hair; there was a copious amount of Quality Street on the desk; and there was a rumour that the local church congregation was coming to sing carols at midday. Adiditionally, restrictions on visiting times had been removed, so the ward was full of families who had transplanted their Christmas Day to a district general hospital. Every patient I spoke to thanked me for being there, and some relatives that I’d never met gave me a card. By the time the choir arrived, I was in such a good mood that I didn’t care that the canteen had charged me £7 for a piece of turkey that resembled nondescript white cardboard, uncooked sprouts, and a Christmas pudding that was primarily cold lard.

When I started working as a junior doctor, I was surprised at the lack of morale among staff, and the rudeness I encountered, when we were all trying to do our best. It is exhausting; you end up resenting your career choice, and most people are in the same boat. Suddenly, on this day I had been dreading, my utopian view of the NHS came true. We all worked together, there was no back-biting, and the patients’ indomitable spirit put a spring in my step. I then had one of the worst and most profound moments of my career.

Late on in my shift, an extremely ill young woman died unexpectedly and her elderly mother was called in for the bad news to be broken. My colleague disappeared and, before I knew it, the patient’s mother had arrived on the ward. Apart from feeling angry at the other doctor for vanishing, my main emotion was one of dread. I had broken bad news before, but this was Christmas Day. I took the mother into a side room with a nurse and had to bite the inside of my mouth as I told her. She stood up, gave me a hug, and thanked me for being brave. Here is a woman receiving some of the worst news a person can hear, and she was concerned for me.

I was really proud of our National Health Service on that day. If you are working this year, I hope you enjoy your cardboard turkey, feel sick from the Quality Street, and wear your Christmas jumper with pride.

Jenny Hughes is a post-foundation training doctor, currently spending a year as a clinical teaching fellow in anatomy at Barts and the London Medical School.

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