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Typical Week
Monday: Officially my day off, but I usually do work related research, reading at home in the morning. I help with my little daughter's swimming class for 1 hour. I may do a spot of shopping (every so often we all need a bit of retail therapy), then in the afternoon I pick up my youngest children from school and take them for their music /guitar classes (I make phone calls in the car whilst waiting for them).
Tuesday: I get up at 06.45, start work at 08.30, and do a morning clinic followed by an afternoon of meetings at work.
Wednesdays and Thursdays are similar; I do clinics in the mornings and do administrative work in my office in the afternoons. Sometimes in the evenings of Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I may see private patients and spend the rest of the evening with my family.
Fridays are again officially my day off, but I either read medical literature at home or sometimes I see private patients. I help with my son's swimming class and some weeks I have singing lessons (Currently practising songs from Cole Porter's songbook). In the afternoon I pick my children up from school and spend time with them. Some Friday evenings I go for dance classes (Quite keen on Ceroc nowadays).
At weekends I potter around the house, do some cooking, go on trips/to parks with family, visit friends or entertain guests at home. Saturday evenings I usually go to theatres, cinemas or live music venues (Recently been discovering new live jazz venues. One of the advantages of living in London (there are many disadvantages too!..) is that there are always good musicians performing somewhere within easy reach. |
My Background
I have been in the U.K. for the last 15 years. I graduated from Istanbul Medical School (Capa Tip) in 1987. After completing my post graduate training in General Medicine in the Midlands and Manchester I did supraspecialist training in Rheumatology at the University College London Hospitals. During this period I also obtained my doctorate from University College London.
I always knew I wanted to be a physician (as opposed to a surgeon!). I chose rheumatology as a subspecialty since it is one of the most challenging areas of medicine where there is a lot of research and progress is being made. I look after people with rheumatic conditions / diseases of bones, joints and muscles (Patients with aches and pains, arthritis, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases etc...)
My Job
I currently work at the Royal London Hospital as a consultant rheumatologist. I work in a big academic department with 6 other consultant colleagues and alongside my colleagues I supervise a team of general medicine and rheumatology trainees and specialist nurses. As well as providing a clinical service for the patients I also teach junior doctors and medical students. We teach medical students from Queen Mary's medical school. I also do research, write articles, give talks, attend meetings/conferences and read regularly medical literature to keep up with advances in medicine.
I work in the NHS for 3 days a week although that is never enough to finish work, so I also do some work from home. I also see private patients at the London Independent Hospital on my day off or evenings.
Worst Bits
Worst bit of my job is not having enough time to talk to patients because of the limited amount of time we have in busy NHS clinics. I believe patient education to be an important part of our role as doctors.
Best Bits
Well, there are many...One gets a huge amount of pleasure from making people better. Great levels of job satisfaction, a lot of respect from the public (despite all the negative media/news about medical profession most patients do appreciate the high standard of care we provide), and very interesting work (as they say there are patients not diseases, every patient is different)
Family:
I am married to a busy paediatrician and have three busy children aged 12 (Papatya), 7 (Can) and 5 (Ela).
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