Nils Desperandum

A colleague, summing up a recent difficult job of theirs. And I’d never really thought about this until they said it today, but it’s absolutely true. And it’s true. It’s absolutely important that if nursing numbers aren’t adequate that we protect patients by ‘shutting down’ beds to ensure a good nurse to patient ratio. And even with that, things can sometimes still end up very difficult for our nurse colleagues. But the thing is, when you’ve got a shortage of doctors; your rota is one or more people down, or someone’s sick etc, there’s no doctor equivalent of adjusting bed numbers relative to the number of docs covering patients. Which means that, depending on the patient number and acuity, docs can end up staying late every day to make sure everything is done for their patients, and that their patients are safely covered. We’ve probably all been in jobs where there never seem to be enough hours of the day, and you always feel like you are behind. And it’s not because you’re working slowly, so much as there always seems to be a lot to do. And the minute you sort one thing, or send one patient home, that merely opens up the chance for a new admission and lots more work. As a junior doctor you learn to work fast, double-check everything (make that triple-check, because if there’s a slight chance for something to go wrong, it will), chase up on other people’s jobs, and try to be as efficient as you can. You walk fast, type faster, write faster still, and try to power through as much as you can. You think up the most efficient ways to organise your ward round and to do your jobs, in order to make sure things come back as soon as possible. You get to know the hospital inside out. Too often, juniors feel inadequate for struggling with workloads that aren’t actually reasonable.  And too often, it feels like seniors are blaming you for not being more efficient, still. You can often be blamed for the faults of the system; you’re expected to pre-empt every possible problem by triple-checking everything and doing everything yourself. And it’s no wonder that many of us struggle under that pressure.

I resent that I can’t make the system better for them. For all of us. That I’m just one person. I resent that it could swallow up me or the friends I love at any second and spit us out, leaving us spent and broken. I resent that many don’t care, or try to silence us because “someone else has it worse, somewhere”. Of course they do. But we all deserve better. I resent the rising body count. The many colleagues lost to suicide. The many who lose years of their lives to sickness and despair. I resent the stigma which forces our friends who are struggling to stay alone, and to feel like they are the problem. I resent that the support is sometimes not good enough or not there at all. I resent that it’s harder for us to seek help or be open about our struggles specifically because we are doctors. I resent so much that illness is seen by many as a personal failing. I resent that there is a quiet expectation for doctors to struggle on quietly. I resent that there are so many struggling, and yet many of us feel so alone. I resent how so many of us feel forced to leave to survive. I resent that some of us can dedicate decades of study and love to our lives but become so worn down that giving up is the best choice. I resent how hard that is, because we’ve given so much of our lives to medicine and constructed our very identities around it. I resent how many people suffer, because admitting the one thing you most want to do is destroying you, is in itself heartbreaking. I resent how hard it is for people to claw back a life and identity for themselves after medicind has laid waste to their support networks and interests and sense of self. I resent the outsiders who tell us to “do something else if you don’t like it”, those who have no idea what such a choice means to us.You can never know enough. You can never do enough. And you’re always at risk of being pressured into making a mistake for which you will be vilified as an individual, with little consideration for the curcumstanced which forced your hand. I resent that I’m one of the lucky ones.  I’m doing OK. My seniors have been mostly supportive, my patients mostly kind. My crises have been small. My wobbles well supervised when it mattered. I resent that so many smart, brave people have not been so lucky. I resent that this should even be down to luck. I resent that if my placements had been different, I’d probably be leaving clinical medicine like some of my friends. I resent that despite my luck and all the support, it is still do hard and still takes so much from me, leaving me different than before. I resent my survivor’s guilt. I resent that we are all potentially one bad placement or one personal crisis away from a nervous breakdown. I resent the balancing act. And I resent the well-meaning but ineffectual advice on resilience, which focuses on teaching us how to cope with a terrible situation, and does nothing to change the reality of the situation iteself.. I resent that things are going to get worse, because everything the government do is just eroding conditions further and heaping fuel onto the fire. I’m going to carry on, and put on my badge, and smile, as usual. And I’m going to take extra care to be kind to my colleagues and make sure my friends are OK. And I’ll get by, hopefully for a long time. But I won’t forget the casualties among us, or those struggling with the system, and I won’t forget our stress and our anger.

You somehow get enough sleep, then head straight back to work for the next night…

Night shifts are surreal experiences; you walk miles and miles of corridor. You flit from cardiac arrests to aggressive patients to patients requesting sleeping tablets at 5am, to confirming that patients who have died are actually, well, dead. With every possible permutation in between. It feels never-ending, and it very possibly is; you lose track of what day it is, what time it is, possibly even what decade it is. When you finally step out into the morning light, you can’t even stand the sunlight any more.

my entire body: YES! YES! YES THANK YOU GOD!!!!!! YES YES YES YE

Attending, referencing patient who was moaning consistently in an amusing, high pitched manner

This woman confronts racism in the funniest way possible.

May 2019 bring everyone happiness, love, success, hope, acceptance, and everything a person could want.

Can I please get a new nurse?

female high school bullies: become nurses

This is called “lateral/horizontal violence” and it’s sadly prevalent in the Nursing profession.

Bullies who go into nursing abuse patients the same way bullies who become cops abuse civilians. That’s the real issue. It’s not horizontal aggression, it’s medical abuse.

also me: *smacks anyone pointing a camera in my direction*

This campaign defies censorship in social media to raise awareness for early detection of breast cancer

Stop Clickbait.

APPLE PIE WITH A PURPLE BLUEBERRY CRUST