Croeso | Welcome
Hello! Shwmae! A very warm welcome to Four Eyed Medic.
My name is Dr Steffan Williams (although that is far too formal, so please call me Steff ) and I’m currently an ACCS Anaesthetics trainee in South Wales.
I trained at Cardiff University Medical School for five years before completing my Foundation training in Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board. Which means that, after many years of exams, placements and generally wondering whether I actually knew anything at all, I am now (and apparently have been for some time) officially a doctor.
A bit about me
I’m a born and raised Welshman and a proudly fluent Welsh (Cymraeg) speaker.
In fact, Cymraeg is my first language.
I grew up in a small village just outside Llanelli in West Wales and had the incredible fortune of being educated through the medium of Welsh. I even studied parts of my medical degree in Cymraeg.
Now, I could quite happily disappear down a rabbit hole discussing Welsh language healthcare, what it means to practise medicine bilingually and why being able to speak to someone in their first language can matter enormously. But I’ll save that for another post. Otherwise, this introduction may become a dissertation.
As a Welshman, I also fulfil several contractual stereotypes...
1) I used to play rugby
2) I used to sing in a choir
3) Sadly, I have not yet mastered the harp.
Outside medicine, I’m a big fan of cycling, coffee and reading non-fiction. It was actually the latter that partly inspired me to start writing this blog.
The coffee probably helps too.
So, why Four Eyed Medic?
Firstly, the name.
I was born with a cataract and a condition with an impressively long medical name: persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous.
As a result, glasses and I have been inseparable for most of my life. I’ve experienced the full spectacled fashion journey, from beautifully geeky round glasses, late-2000s rectangular glasses and various attempts over the years to convince myself that a particular frame made me look sophisticated.
So, yes. I am a proud four eyes.
And when I needed a name for a medical blog, Four Eyed Medic seemed fairly inevitable.
But I also quite like the other meaning.
A lot of what I want to do here is look at medicine from a slightly different perspective. Sometimes that will mean looking back at experiences I’ve had. Sometimes it will mean looking very closely at a piece of research. And sometimes it will involve staring at something mildly ridiculous about working in the NHS and wondering how on earth we have all collectively accepted it as normal.
Why start a blog?
In the age of everyone having a podcast, why not?!
But in truth the reason may seem a little more profound,
During medical school and Foundation training, I found there was no shortage of information telling me how to become a doctor.
There were textbooks. Lectures. Guidelines. Revision websites. All of which superb and a 'true' representation of real life doctoring (in case the GMC are reading)
Some people on the internet appeared to have completed twelve audits, cured a rare disease and published three papers before breakfast. To them I say a truly well deserved da iawn.
What I found much harder to find were completely honest accounts of what being a doctor actually felt like.
The uncertainty. The mistakes. The moments where you feel completely out of your depth. The patients you keep thinking about after you've gone home. The strange satisfaction of finally getting a difficult cannula. And the occasional day where your greatest achievement is simply making it to lunch.
Those are the things I want to write about here.
I’ll share stories and reflections from training, including times when things have gone well and, probably more importantly, times when they haven’t.
I’m hoping that by being open about those experiences, somebody earlier in their own training might stumble across a post and think: "Thank f***. It's not just me."
What else will I write about?
Quite a lot, hopefully.
One of my major interests is anaesthetics and critical care, so unsurprisingly there will be plenty of airways, physiology, ventilation, resuscitation and, because apparently I have become this sort of person, blood gases.
I bloody love a blood gas.
I also want to use this blog to talk about interesting research. Not simply by repeating the abstract, but by actually looking at the paper. What did they do? Was it any good? Does the conclusion match the results? Should we actually change anything because of it?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Do I believe it?
For now, most of that will be written. Eventually, though, I’d love to develop it into something resembling a virtual journal club, perhaps with videos or a podcast and discussions alongside the posts.
Most of the papers will inevitably relate to anaesthetics and critical care because those are the things I find most interesting. But I reserve the right to become irrationally excited by research from elsewhere.
Just medical stuff then?
Absolutely not.
Anyone who knows me will be aware that I am very capable of talking at considerable length about things that have absolutely nothing to do with medicine (don't get me started about vegetables in the botanical sense...)
Some may call this conversation. Others may call it rambling.
I have decided to embrace the latter.
So alongside medicine, you can expect posts about things I’ve found useful, things I’ve been thinking about, life outside work, Wales, dogs, cycling, books, golf and almost certainly coffee.
There will probably also be occasional observations about hospital life that nobody asked for.
That's what blogs are for.
Sit back, relax and enjoy!
So, that’s me.
I’m not entirely sure where Four Eyed Medic will end up, and I think that’s part of the fun. For now, I want it to be somewhere I can share the things I’m learning, the things I find interesting and the occasional story from this slightly strange career we call medicine.
Hopefully some of it will be useful. Hopefully some of it will make you laugh. And if I manage both at the same time, even better.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you’ll join me for the next one.
Diolch,
Dr Steff