krissylou wrote:

So while Sherlock is "dead" for two years John has settled down working as a general practitioner, prescribing antibiotics for thrush and the like.

But we've seen his resume when he was applying for the short-term job at Sarah's clinic and his background is in trauma surgery, including really cutting-edge stuff like bloodless surgery.  So why isn't he doing that?

I'm okay with just accepting that this takes place in a world where a trauma surgeon is automatically able to also work as a GP.  I can suspend my disbelief that far.  Or that he's dual qualified because you need to be able to do all sorts of things in Afghanistan.  So okay when he's flat out of money and needs something and there's a short-term fill-in job at Sarah's clinic that's fine.

But this is different.  This is a long-term arrangement.  Why is he prescribing routine antibiotics rather than being in an OR or ER somewhere?  That would seem a better fit for our little adrenaline junkie.  And, well they didn't have to show us his resume but they did.

Maybe the tremor in his left hand has permanently barred him from the OR?  Whether it's psychosomatic or nerve damage from the shoulder wound or a bit of both, his surgeon days are over.  That would be another crushing blow, if he spent a good portion of his life training to be a trauma surgeon and pretty early on he's permanently disqualified.

Or maybe being a GP is for John Watson a symptom of depression?  If he had any zest for life he would be in the local ER but as it is, well, why bother?
 

This is a really interesting question!

I  suspect that they were simply going with the canon version of Dr Watson as a physician, and maybe didn't really think it through, though I entirely agree that showing us his résumé would make us question that. However, I suspect that the current answer is that he has spent 2 years chronically depressed after Sherlock's apparent death and he hasn't had the zest for doing what he's capable of; Mary working at the practise has provided a reason to enjoy working there, though presumably she will be off on maternity leave fairly soon, provided she isn't tragically cut down in a hail of bullets from her previous victims. People can get very stroppy about their flu jabs.

I'm fairly sure he would be qualified to act as a Physician; my daughters first medical degree was the five year MBBS, which, via Latin translation, turns into Bachelor of Medicine and Batchelor of Surgery. She only started to specialise as a physician after at least another 2 years after graduation, having done a series of surgical/medical rotations for those 2 years. She's now a Member of the Royal Collece of Physicians, and after the next two years of rotations, has chosen her speciality, but as a medical registrar on call she is responsible for all medical patients, irrespective of what's wrong with them.  So she is the person where the buck stops, and is often called to the A&E to evaluate people who clealy have surgical problems, but also may have serious non-surgical problems. Also, on occasions  to recognise serious surgical problems which the A&E people have missed, but we all have bad days.

So, it would probably be a good idea if the writers clarified this. The location of John's wound in canon was all over the place; ACD wasn't big on continuity, so I see no canonical reason to suggest that he can't do A&E stuff because his shoulder prevents it. He would probably enjoy it a lot more than viewing bunions, and he could make a lot of money as a locum enabling him to go off with Sherlock whenever the Game is On.

Thank you for raising such an interesting point; I should have been asleep hours ago as I have an early meeting so clearly if I blow it I will be blaming it all on you

 

I thought it's coz he's running his own surgery. If he is his own boss than GP would be cheaper to run than an ER department.

saturnR wrote:

I thought it's coz he's running his own surgery. If he is his own boss than GP would be cheaper to run than an ER department.

I love it! 
 

Willow wrote:

On the other hand I am shocked, shocked, I tell you that you failed to enjoy your rotation on ortho. I had deduced from your posts that you are a seven feet tall rugby player and you really would have been a perfect fit

Lol that would be my consultant's dream come through but instead he had to put up with a female midget with no intrest in sport or DIY.

The more I see of Watson's psychopatic traits on screen the more I'm convinced that he was a trauma surgeon to start with and not a GP. ;)

I agree that AE job would suite him better and it would be more realistic for him to get one. As a surgeon he couldn't start working as a GP without retraining but he could have walked straight into a middle grade job in AE.
 

Last edited by belis (January 23, 2014 6:12 pm)

I've just found this thread and it hit on something I've been thinking about since I watched the GP surgery scenes in TEH.   As far as I know, GPs all go through GP training.   It's not something a surgeon can just switch to.  He'd have had to go through the training.   So at some point before meeting Sherlock, he must have made the decision to undertake GP training.   If he really had been a surgeon first, then he'd have made an even bigger decision to give up something he'd trained long and hard for to start back at the beginning with GP training. 

(Now, I don't know if his career choices in the forces were so limited that GP training was the only option?  But it doesn't make much sense to retrain a surgeon as a GP).

It's clear from the surgery scenes (which have so many odd things about them that they feel like a fantasy sequence, and are possibly meant to be: this is showing John's feelings about his job rather than the reality of it) that he really doesn't like general practice, and that it doesn't have the things he wants out of a job.  So why did he choose it?  I'm puzzled by his lack of insight into his own needs.

It's an interesting suggestion that he may have chosen it because of depression, years ago.  We don't know a lot about his mental health background, do we?  There's the hint of PTSD at the beginning, and he sees a counsellor, but what was happening around the time that he chose GP training?  Or am I reading too much into this?

He seemed to almost wallow in the boredom and dissatisfaction that we were seeing.  I felt that he could have at least taken up a dangerous sport or something, if he disliked work so much.   He knew he needed excitement, yet chose to avoid it (and apparently had done so previously, when he chose GP training).  He's quite a conflicted character.

And I hope he's not prescribing antibiotics for thrush!   (Did he really do that?)

Last edited by Liberty (July 31, 2014 7:06 am)