Scrubbed: A Heart Surgeon’s Extraordinary Memoir of Life, Death and Everything in Between

From childhood Nikki Stamp wanted to be a doctor. It was a calling, not a career. Her love for her vocation only grew as a medical student, and as a young registrar going through training rotations she fell, totally and utterly, for the hugely demanding specialty of cardiothoracic surgery.

But alongside the excitement and enormous challenges of trying to make it in one of the toughest and most competitive fields of surgery came warning signs. Within the hospital system she lived with inhuman hours, chronic sleep deprivation and bureaucratic mismanagement that had a profoundly damaging effect on her life outside of work. Even in the operating theatre, where she felt most alive, she battled with sexism and enormous egos.

From the drama of the operating theatre, filled with both triumph and tragedy, to the brutal realities of surgical training and the sacrifices needed to make it to the top, to entrenched misogyny and the grinding nature of hospital politics, Scrubbed is one of the most revealing audiobooks about the real life and experiences of a surgeon.