Forgotten

Forgotten

In 2022 I had a CCT(Certificate of Completion of Training) and no job.

On paper, that sentence makes no sense.

The country was short of doctors. Hospitals were stretched. Waiting lists were growing. Newspapers were filled with stories about staffing crises.

And yet I was unemployed.

Post-CCT unemployment is a strange space to occupy. You are no longer a trainee. The training programme has said goodbye. The institutional umbilical cord has been cut. But you are not yet anchored as a consultant.

You are suspended.

My training programme had waved me off. I had waved back. I had moved halfway down the country. New house. New schools for the children. No local mentors. No network. No familiarity.

The assumption had been simple: something would line up.

It did not.

Paperwork Before People

What I hadn’t appreciated was how much modern medicine runs on paperwork rather than need.

Forms. References. Occupational health clearances. Mandatory modules. Agency registrations. Compliance checklists.

I spent months filling in forms.

Uploading certificates.

Re-uploading certificates because the file size was wrong.

Chasing referees.

Waiting for DBS confirmations.

Applying for locums that “didn’t materialise.”

Each time I put myself forward and heard nothing back, it chipped away at something quiet inside.

Orthopaedics, it felt, had forgotten me.

I would wake early. Shower. Dress. Drop the children at their new school. Smile reassuringly at them, as though everything was settled. Then come home and sit at a desk applying for work.

It is a peculiar experience to have trained for over a decade in a craft, to have passed the exam designed to certify you as fit for day-one consultancy, and then to find yourself waiting for someone to tick a box so you can work a shift.

The irony was not lost on me.

Identity in Suspension

Unemployment does something to identity.

If you are a surgeon but not operating, what are you?

If you are trained, examined, certified—and not being used—what does that mean?

There is a quiet erosion that can occur when your daily structure disappears. When you are not on a rota. When no one is bleeping you. When no one is asking for your opinion.

Value can begin to feel conditional.

I reminded myself that my knowledge was at its peak. The generality that comes at the end of training—trauma, upper limb, lower limb, paediatrics, infection—was still sharp. I had not yet narrowed into subspecialist tunnel vision.

So I began to write.

If I was not operating, I would record.

An ebook of thoughts. Fragments of experience. Lessons learnt. Concepts distilled. It was partly therapeutic and partly strategic. Knowledge, if not used, fades. Writing forced it to crystallise.

Creation filled the silence.

But silence still lingered.

The Nuanced Position

As a Black surgeon with a CCT and no post, I felt acutely aware of nuance.

On paper, I could apply for substantive consultant roles. Some peers were doing exactly that. If successful, I would begin with minimal post-CCT experience, in a new environment, under intense scrutiny.

There is scrutiny that all new consultants face.

And then there is scrutiny layered with stereotype.

I knew that stepping straight into a substantive consultant role without bedding in, without a support system, without confidence forged through repetition, could be risky.

Risky clinically.

Risky politically.

Risky reputationally.

I applied anyway.

And got nowhere.

Rejections without interview.

Shortlists that didn’t include my name.

The months stretched.

Financial pressure is clarifying. School fees. Mortgage. Life does not pause because you are in transition.

So I made a decision.

I would apply for registrar roles.

Humility and Strategy

There is humility in applying for a job below the title you have just earned.

But there is also strategy.

I was, after all, an experienced registrar. I could start strongly. I could contribute immediately. It would buy time. It would generate income. It would allow me to choose my next move carefully.

I signed up for a locum block in a hospital two hours away.

Nights.

There is something grounding about night shifts. The hospital strips down to essentials. Hierarchy softens. Decisions sharpen. Fatigue exposes character.

I arrived not as a consultant. Not as a trainee. Just as a doctor on call.

And in that set of nights, several things happened that shifted everything.

The Reminder

One of the consultants I worked with during that block would later become a collaborator. At the time, it was simply collegial conversation. Cases discussed. Opinions exchanged. Professional respect forming quietly.

But the moment that stays with me happened after an early morning trauma meeting.

As the room emptied, one of the senior post-exam registrars approached me.

He hesitated slightly.

“Are you the guy who created Orthom8?”

I nodded.

He smiled, almost sheepishly.

“Can I take a picture with you? My friends and I have been using your resources. We always wondered who you were.”

For a second, I did not know what to say.

I had been feeling forgotten.

Invisible.

Redundant.

Yet here was someone whose exam preparation had been shaped, in part, by something I built in my lowest professional moment.

Orthopaedics had not forgotten me.

I had simply been looking in the wrong places for validation.

Star in the Background

It is possible to feel professionally irrelevant while simultaneously being professionally impactful.

I had been keeping a low profile. Unemployed. Applying quietly. Trying not to broadcast uncertainty.

But Orthom8 had been travelling in rooms I was not present in.

My “star,” as people sometimes put it, had not dimmed.

It had simply been shining elsewhere.

That picture in the hospital corridor was more than a flattering moment. It was evidence.

Evidence that value is not always tied to contract.

Evidence that influence is not always tied to employment.

Evidence that identity can survive unemployment.

Digging Deep

Those nights changed my internal posture.

I was no longer the unemployed surgeon waiting for someone to call.

I was the surgeon choosing his next step.

Financially, the shifts mattered.

Psychologically, they mattered more.

There is something about stepping back into acute work—making decisions, leading teams, managing chaos—that restores muscle memory. Confidence does not disappear; it waits for activation.

By the end of that locum block, I felt reconnected.

Not to a job.

To myself.

The Long View

Looking back, 2022 was not a detour.

It was compression.

A forcing function.

It stripped away assumptions about security.

It forced me to confront questions:

If no one hires you, who are you?
If institutions move on, what remains?
What do you fall back on?

The answer, I discovered, was simple.

You fall back on what you build.

Knowledge.

Reputation.

Relationships.

Courage.

Unemployment tested all of them.

But it did not erase them.

Not Forgotten

There is a peculiar strength that comes from surviving a period where the system appears to move without you.

It teaches you that your worth is not solely conferred by appointment.

It reminds you that visibility built authentically outlasts contracts.

It forces you to separate title from identity.

In 2022 I was unemployed.

But I was not finished.

And as I stood in that corridor taking a photograph with a registrar who had benefited from my work, I realised something quietly profound:

You are never as forgotten as you fear.

Sometimes you are simply between chapters.