I'm alive
Work is hard at the moment, I'm working 11 hour days most days at the moment excluding on calls (EWTD my arse) and it's going to get worse over the next month as 1 of us will be doing the job of 2 people as we use up our annual leave! I'm working the weekend ( if I've not contracted norovirus) and frankly things are starting to do my head in - mostly incomptence an uselessness on the part of other people.
Anyway when is one supposed to do the things that everyone else always seems to have time to do?
This year's cohort of 'new' doctors have just passed the half-way point, this includes me. Six months down, six paydays celebrated, and a wealth of experience gained. They say time flies when you're having fun and time has certainly flown by, does this mean it has been fun? Well.... yes on the whole it has. I very pleased to say that I really enjoy what I do most of the time, in fact the only thing I hate about the job is pre-op assessment (where the surgical F1s see elective surgical cases a week or so before they are admitted to pick up any potential problems which might be encountered). I'm not sure why I hate pre-op so much, I just find the whole process horrendously boring.
It has been over a month since my last blog, and after I promised an update within the week. For those of you that are still around I thought I'd pop by and say hello. The last 4 months have flown by, my first job is over and it is sad times indeed. It doesn't seem like 2 minutes since I set foot on the ward for the first time with no clue as to what I was doing. 4 months later and I was just getting settled and its time to move on. I've really enjoyed my first job, it has been interesting and a fairly gentle introduction but most of all, the team on the ward were fantastic. Everyone was lovely and it was a really friendly atmosphere, I think that is what I'm going to miss the most. I never expected to become attached to the job like I did.
Perhaps what makes it worse is that I'm going from probably one of the best jobs to probably the worst! Frankly, I'm shitting bricks and I'm talking breeze blocks here! On Friday evening as I sat talking to the outgoing F1 of my new job my worst fears became a reality. Whenever anybody has asked me what I'm doing next and I've answered, it has been swiftly followed by a sympathetic sharp intake of breath. I'd spent the last few weeks in denial thinking it was a long time before I'd have to worry about that but now I'm 24 hours away from hell. From what I hear, the job is a bitch, the people hostile and the atmosphere terrifying. I've seen many of my colleagues stressed, upset and crying (mostly the outgoing two who's job becomes mine on Monday).
I'm hoping things will be different, and I intend to be optimistic, at least till 5pm on Monday (although it'll probably be more like 11pm). On the plus side it might give me a bit more blogging material. Most of the other surgical F1s seem to spend most of their time chilling out in the mess, I've never, ever seen my 2 predecessors in the mess. I've spent the last 4 months enjoying myself and feeling sorry for those having an awful time but now I suspect it's my turn.
Oh, and in other big news, I think I might be a closet medic rather than a surgeon!
It has been 2 weeks since my last blog and now I begin to realise that a fair proportion of my time is being consumed by work. I can barely imagine how things must have been only a few years ago with 100+ hour weeks. This week though I am on holiday! By holiday I mean staying at home rather than going to work, this means I actually get some time to do things I would have normally done during the day as a student. It also gives me time to catch up with several thousand blog posts in my google reader, I've just spent the last couple of hours skim reading far too many blog posts! I'm now as up to date as I'll ever be. Now I've caught up the prospect of reading blogs again isn't quite as scary.
I've already been bleeped several times since being on holiday - I've not answered of course (I did that once as I was expecting a call and have been chastised ever since) but there is a sense of curiosity - who is it and what do they want?
Today I decided to bake double chocolate chip cookies (they are bloody good too). For no other reason than because I could. Perhaps working life is sending me slightly insane. I'm still enjoying being a doctor, although at times my job can be a bit stale (mainly due to the nature of my post). Nevertheless, during the day, time passes quickly and inevitably there isn't enough time in the day to do everything. When on ward cover - time either flies, when you're busy, or trickles by if you're sat in the mess. I definitely prefer being busy.
I have little else to say at the moment, although I do have plenty of potential blogging topics on the cards. I'm going to try a little and often approach to blogging to see if I can get back into the zone. I'll be back before the end of the week... I promise.
Oh, and finally, I bought myself an iPhone 3G - it rocks my socks!
Ok, so I promised to blog the weekend before last and didn't. The main reason for this is that we now have 4 dead laptops in our house (don't ask what we do to them - I've no idea). Anyway, we've just got a desktop courtesy of missbliss's parents (thank you :)) Of course there is also the other matter of being quite busy. This whole working thing is rather annoying, most of the time I'm only supposed to work 8 hour days, at least that's what the hospital would like to think (naturally we are EWTD compliant). This makes life difficult enough, especially when you consider I've not done an 8hr day yet! When the bloody hell are you supposed to go to the bank when you have a job? When are you supposed to go and spend your hard earned cash? I barely have enough time to wee during the day let alone leave the hospital! I don't mind being busy as it makes the time go quickly but I could do with a 4 day week just so that I can do everything I need to do outside of work. 24hr Manchester had its advantages in that respect. This makes time for blogging a little short - but now we have a computer which hopefully will work for more than 2 days, it should be easier!I've just finished what should have been 12 days straight, actually I had friday off so it was infact only 11 days. My day off wasn't much of a holiday though, apart from a yuppie-esque lunch in town with missbliss who was working, I spent all day catching up on real-life admin - bore. It was my first weekend 'on call' (basically ward cover for about 200-300 patients) last weekend and it was genuinely the most stressful weekend of my entire life. Not in a oh my god I can't do this way but in a holy shit what the hell is going on way. The fact I had some really great senior staff probably prevented me from the complete emotional collapse that some of my colleagues have had. I can safely say that it isn't fun when someone is effectively bleeding half of their circulating volume out through their rectum right in front of you. Overall, apart from the fact it was a weekend, I quite enjoyed myself - although I'm not rushing to do another one! The responsibility is bloody scary but at the same time quite exhilarating, the chance to see and do some acute medicine is refreshing compared to my usually quite stable ward patients. Inevitably, with independence and lack of experience come mistakes - I don't know whether or not I've made any yet, particularly as I rarely see again the patients I see when on ward cover. The hardest thing about being on cover is prioritising things, that is the key. In fact, the same can be said for the whole of medicine. When your bleep is going off every 5 minutes, not only do you have to be organised but you also have to have a way of triaging things in your head. Some jobs can be done in minutes but complex and ill patients can take hours. Am I supposed to run off and answer my bleep every time I'm in the middle of something? It might be polite, but it is completely impractical. For me this was one of the hardest things to get used to, although sometimes I regret answering - for example when switchboard have for some reason given my bleep to a very persistent job-seeking cleaner, seriously, like I don't have more important things to worry about!P.S - when sorting through our music on our shiny (old) desktop I discovered missbliss has no fewer than 9 copies of Dolly Parton's, Working 9 to 5.
I know I promised that I wouldn't moan or mention Manchester again but I couldn't resist.
As I said in this post I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of this years National Student Survey results on the unistats website, particularly the student satisfaction aspect.
Manchester - 30th out of 32 medical schools who provided enough data.
Ouch - that has to hurt. At least now you don't just have to take my word for it. And when I advise potential students to avoid Manchester like the plague - I can provide a bit more evidence than just my experience.
More hospital tales this weekend.....
Ok ladies and gentlemen, it has been over a month since I started life as a real life doctor. We're now completely settled in our new flat and have the Internet up and running. I'm clearly out of practice when it comes to blogging and my Google reader says I have 857 unread items, at some point I want to catch up with at least some of them.
The first month has, as you might expect, been rather eventful. From writing my first prescription to my first on call, dealing with my first death (not my fault, I should add) to my first pay day, and PLENTY of hospital politics in between.
The first week was rather terrifying, and it wasn't made any easier by my consultant being on holiday for the first two weeks. Thank god for the rest of the team! - WRONG! Half of my registrar (yes half - there are two of them who job share) is on long term sick and the other half also just happened to be on holiday during my first week. And the SHO - well, somewhere along the line they seem to have forgotten about them entirely and replaced them with me!!! For those of you who don't know much about hospitals let me simplify things a little - I was left entirely on my own! Had I not done a few days shadowing prior to starting my role being left on my own would have been a rather catastrophic event. In reality it wasn't that bad at all (not from my point of view anyway - the patients might tell a different story).
I coped by stumbling around the ward attempting to do my own ward rounds - having no idea what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I don't think I killed anyone which is pretty remarkable considering. The other doctors, and nurses were great in helping me out as much as possible. I got very excited during my first day when I prescribed some antibiotic eardrops based on my own diagnosis (although I had to ask the pharmacist which ones to give) - so its not exactly a life saving decision but it was one of the first decisions I made all by myself and with nobody senior to monitor it!
There are so many stories to tell from those first few days but now they seem like a distant memory. The first month has certainly gone faster than I ever imagined it would, and of course with that came the first pay day - all I've got to say about that is that I'm now entitled to moan about being a tax payer - there are FAR too many deductions! Payday was very, very welcome indeed. It is well said that the worst time to be a patient in hospital is the first week in August when all the newbies start - whilst you would probably want to avoid that period I can now say with some certainty that the worst day ever to be ill in hospital is the day after the first pay-day for all the newly qualified doctors! Remember that at the end of August next year and avoid being admitted to hospital at all costs!
Following my first week, the staffing levels improved but only marginally - I had help from another team's SHO, and half of my registrar made it in for 2 days. When my consultant got back it was a huge relief although then came a huge exodus of all the patients I'd been looking after - who by now had been ready for discharge for about a week - I certainly wasn't going to send anyone home myself! Normally people leaving hospital is a good thing right? Well not for me, because every time someone leaves, another patient who is invariably sicker and more complicated takes their place!
My first month has had more than its fair share of 'office' politics, there has already been a resignation on my ward. I gained 6 extra patients to add to the 20-odd I was already looking after and the half of my registrar who wasn't off had a heart attack and is only in hospital as a patient! All in all - it's chaos. A nightmare for the nurses, dangerous for the patients and bewildering for me. Nevertheless, I'm actually really enjoying being a doctor. I don't feel I'm any good at it yet - hopefully that feeling comes with experience but it is certainly interesting, quite good fun and most of all (after five years just racking up debt)- PAID!
That's all for now folks but stay tuned for more stories now I'm hopefully up and blogging again.
Due to fuckwittery on the part of BT, we're still without even a phone line, never mind broadband. Someone made a booboo which meant that we had to re-order, expecting phone line on wednesday and internets sometime shortly after that (fingers crossed). Apologies for the absence.
In the mean time, I'm doing ok. I now have a bit of senior support too which means I'm not running an entire ward on my own. More on that when we get connected.
