TY - JOUR T1 - Counting myself in: a consultation in primary care that changed my practice JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 606 LP - 606 DO - 10.3399/bjgp20X713813 VL - 70 IS - 701 A2 - , Y1 - 2020/12/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/70/701/606.abstract N2 - One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. It had been a while since I relied on the reassuring repetition of those numbers, but over the last 4 months they had become, once again, a regular part of my daily routine. Taps off. Gas off. Window shut. Door locked, one, two, three.That was how I now left the house in the morning, whispering this sequence to myself, sometimes having to repeat it over and over until I felt just about comfortable enough to leave.Although I was unaware at the time, I have had obsessive compulsive symptoms since being a teenager, which, for the most part, had disappeared in my mid-twenties. Some years later, as I entered my final year of medical school, they resurfaced. I felt unprepared for its return, overwhelmed by symptoms that I didn’t fully understand.The distressing thoughts had also evolved and now often related to my time on the wards. I worried obsessively about contamination of the sterile field in theatre, of mixing up blood samples and of needle-stick injuries.These thoughts led to me compulsively checking and rechecking, or seeking reassurance from seniors. The anxiety settled in … ER -