By Betty Clarke
What are doctors? Doctors look after people if they are ill or hurt. Different doctors are trained to do different kinds of treatment. Some doctors are GPs, some doctors are surgeons, some doctors look after babies, some look after your heart, some look after eyes... All the different parts of your body have special doctors!
What do different doctors do? Most doctors work in hospitals. Surgeons work in hospitals. They do operations. If you have a cough or a cold, you go to see your GP at your local surgery.
All about a GP I wrote a letter to Dr Thomas who is a GP at Langford Surgery to see if I could interview her. This is what I found out: GP stands for General Practitioner. A GP is the type of doctor that doesn’t work in a hospital. Dr Thomas works in the surgery, and sometimes visits people at their houses.
Dr Thomas sees patients a day. She sees patients with infections, Diabetes – too high sugar levels, Cancer and heart diseases. She gives her patients antibiotics to treat infections, and painkillers. It takes 6 years to train to be a GP. To be a doctor, you have to have lots of skills like kindness, listening, hard-working, interested in people, and not squeamish!
All about surgeons Surgeons work in hospitals in operating theatres. Surgeons do operations on people who are sick or injured. You have to be put to sleep to have an operation so you can’t feel it. Surgeons have to wash their hands very carefully, and put on special gowns and a mask so they don’t get germs on the patients.
All about dissection People training to be doctors sometimes do dissection to see how parts of the body work. Dissection is when you cut open part of the body to look inside it. I watched someone dissecting a pig’s heart and a horse’s eye. My brother Rufus went a funny colour because he is squeamish!
Me holding the lens from a horse’s eye!
Me and Dr Thomas
Dr Thomas taking my blood pressure with a sphyg- momano- meter
Dr Clarke with my stethescope to listen to hearts, and opthalmoscope to look at eyes!