Rachel Clarke
Rachel Clarke (born 1972) is a British palliative care doctor and writer. Formerly a current affairs journalist, Clarke attended medical school from 2003, qualifying as a doctor in 2009. During 2015–2016, she had an active voice in the dispute in the United Kingdom between junior doctors and the government over their contractual conditions of work, appearing in multiple television debates and interviews. Her best-selling memoir about life as a junior doctor, Your Life In My Hands, was published in 2017. Her second book, Dear Life, published in January 2020, explores death, dying and end-of-life care. Her third book, Breathtaking (2021), is an account of working inside the NHS during the UK's first wave of COVID-19. Biography Clarke studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford and worked as a broadcast journalist prior to her career in medicine. She produced and directed current affairs documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC focusing on subjects such as Al Qaeda, the Gulf War and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as the Second Congo War. At the age of 29, she began a medical degree at Oxford, graduating and beginning work as a junior doctor in