‘I was catching up on surgery cases – and then the publisher called’
Dr Neela Janakiramanan shares how her book, 'The Registrar', came to life during a COVID-19 lockdown
During Melbourne’s second COVID-19 lockdown, reconstructive plastic surgeon Dr Neela Janakiramanan started writing a story called The Registrar.
It was about the unglamorous toll of medical training — told through the eyes of Emma, a first-year orthopaedic surgery registrar working at a (fictional) teaching hospital.
Dr Janakiramanan says it was inspired by her own training experiences, the death of a colleague, a lack of female doctors in fiction and her personal irritation with TV’s ‘hero doctors’.
After being short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, it was picked up by Allen & Unwin and hit bookstore shelves this month.
