#f1doctor

A quite upsetting realisation came to me last night. The last few times I've been to buy alcohol from a supermarket, nobody wanted my ID or questioned my age. I recently went on a night out in a big city renowned for always asking people for ID, not a peep from any of the door men, they just ushered me in... The men who now flirt with me in bars look old enough to be my dad. It's official, I look old. This wouldn't concern me given I am 26, but before I started work (just 1 year ago) I couldn't even buy scratch cards without someone questioning if I was old enough (the age to buy those is 16..) One year of F1 and I now look my age, if not older. That's at least 10 years this job has added to me physically. FML. At the start of F1 I would blow dry my hair every day, wear make up, plan cute outfits.. Now just having clean hair is a bonus, I choose 10 minutes more in bed over applying make up. I'm lucky if I even have clean clothes available, let alone clean, planned outfits... I put it all down to the CONSTANT anxiety. At work there are only two scenarios I find myself in: I'm either in a situation where I have NO idea what I'm doing and am panicking over what to do. OR, it's quiet, not much is happening, yet I am panicking over the bleep that I could get at any moment where I would be faced with a scenario in which I have no idea what I'm doing. There is an occasional (rare..) third scenario where I feel like I know what I'm doing and get slightly comfortable for a moment and use some 'initiative', but this is ALWAYS dashed by someone senior staring at me in a disapproving fashion and snarling "WHY are you doing that...?", taking me straight back to scenario 1. Even at home I am worrying about everything I did/could have done wrong during the day, and worrying what the next day has in store.. I can't even enjoy annual leave, even if I have a whole week off, on the first day I will be thinking "shit, I'm back at work in 6 days..." And that will continue "back at work in 5 days...back at work in 4 days..." and the anxiety will increase as I get closer and closer to going back. The ONLY saving grace at the moment is that I plan to take a year out after F2, that is keeping me going. I've only managed to trudge through F1 by telling myself the next job will be better. My first job was surgery and I thought 'maybe I will enjoy medicine more'... Then I hated medicine and thought 'maybe I will enjoy obs and gynae...', now I hate this I'm thinking 'maybe I will like GP....' . I'm eventually going to run out of excuses to continue and I'm not sure what will happen then, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. My year out after F2 has no structure or plan what so ever, I brush off peoples questions with "I'm going to locum and travel...". I'm hoping that a bit of time away from the CONSTANT flow of stress will allow me to "find myself" and work out what I want. The problem I think many of us face is that having dedicated SO many years to getting here, giving it up all together seems like such a waste.. How can I go from being a doctor to being something else, medicine is the ONLY thing I know, I have no other skills. I've always liked the thought of being an hairdresser, they never have to stick their fingers into smelly holes, have peoples lives in their under skilled hands or go home at night wondering if it was their fault that someone is now dead... Oh, the joys of having a normal job..!

I have been looking forward to finishing F1 since my first day on the job, now I would give anything to have it back. I don't know if this is because I have started on Obs and Gynae and it is super specialised, but I literally haven't got a clue what I am doing. It's just like F1 in that respect I guess, only now my badge reads "senior house officer", which sounds like a person who should know what they are doing. It is also the same title that obs and gynae trainees (people who have been doing this for two years and know shit) share, meaning people expect me to know shit.. I was put in gynae clinic on my first day, I had my own room, a dictaphone to dictate clinic letters and a list of new patients waiting for some specialist advice... And in they walk to see me, barely looking old enough to have left school. When did i go from being the care free medical student sitting leisurely in the back of a clinic, to the situation I am now faced with. The last time I even read about gynae was at least three years ago, and my experience in the field could be listed on a stamp. I stuttered while enquiring about their heavy menstrual bleeding, blushed while asking if they are sexually active (to my surprise SO many old people are..) and clumsily inserted speculums, pretending I knew what I was looking at and taking swabs from around what could possibly be the cervix. What the actual fuck is that about. Ok, so the consultant would ask me my findings every now and again, but he trusted my history, he believed me when I said the examination was normal.. These poor, poor patients. That was a piece of cake though compared to the on calls. Women in labour aren't fun at the best of times, but throw in a bit (or a lot) of bleeding and a high EWS (a score devised to detect deteriorating patients) and I would literally rather pull out my own teeth. The midwives, experts in the field of labouring woman, look at someone like me for a plan when shit hits the fan, I can barely point out who is and isn't pregnant in the city I currently work in and you want ME to deal with this shit?! It's laughable. You show a bit of weakness and people huff, even the reg's, my main senior support, will say things like "come on, use your initiative" when you dare to ask how to do something. I'm not sure what kind of initiative allows you to pull random unknown information out of your arse to construct a logical assessment of something you know absolutely nothing about, but if anyone can show me it I would love them for ever..

At this point I had to step in, the cheeky bastards!! I won’t script what I actually said but I lost my cool, HOW DARE THEY?! I had come to help the patient, I seemed to be the only person who actually wanted to help her, if they knew ANYTHING about cannulating they would realise why I took my glove off to feel for a vein with such a difficult patient, and my main point… AS IF that nurse could EASILY do my job. One thing i have learnt from this job, you can’t argue with an idiot. I eventually got back to the ward round and was given a bucket load of jobs to do that anyone on the round COULD have done, but didn’t do because they knew I would be back to take the shit… The consultant muttered that I’d taken too long reviewing the patient, the reg loaded me up with patient notes, and the day continued as if nothing had happened.

So as I am coming to the end of F1, a new set of terrified faces are flocking to the wards. I had a good think about what I could say to prepare them, how I could mask my hostility towards the entire job, how to talk about on calls without telling them that their first will probably be one of the worst days of their life.. When I think back to my first days as an F1, and remember the SUPER keen "medicine loving", 'everything is rainbows and unicorns and this is the most amazing job is the world' type doctor that I was shadowing, I actually want to punch him in the face. Everyone that I spoke to told me how great the job was, and how I would love it and that I have come in to the best career ever.. They set me up for the biggest disappointment of my life. For months I felt like I was the only one struggling, that I was the only one that hated it, I wondered why everyone else seemed to be having a great old time while I was laying at home wondering how I could break my leg as painlessly as possible, in order to miss a few weeks of work (seriously..) That's one of the reasons i started this blog, hoping that I may provide comfort for someone else like me. So I decided, my message to all the new F1s of 2014 is that this next year will be awful, no question about it. It will probably be on of the worst years of your life. Lots will be expected of you, people will tell you that support is always there but they are lying, no one will thank you for the hundreds of extra hours you put in but everyone will notice that one time you leave half an hour early for a dentist appointment. You will feel like you don't know anything, and that feeling will stay with you all year. But remember, everyone is in the same position, no matter how cocky and confident the others seem, everyone is shitting their pants. And it does get better (if only slightly!) ...

Today I was "told off" for wearing nail varnish to work. It was essentially 'natural nail' coloured. The fact she noticed I was even wearing any shows what a psycho obsessive bitch my registrar is. My nails look so much neater with a slick of gloss. Her reason for why I can't wear nail varnish.. - "well I can't wear it, so you sure as hell can't". Such a bitch. Nothing makes sense in medicine. I don't touch a patient without gloves, gloves which conceal my nails... Why not paint them and look more presentable? Why can't we wear earrings? Why can I not wear a ring, but a married medic can? Do bacteria respect the sanctity of marriage? When we barrier nurse infective patients we have to wear these plastic aprons, why?! My arms are still completely on show, do bacteria aim solely for the torso and ignore the rest of my revealed flesh? I have so many questions that no one can ever answer. How have such intelligent human beings fallen to this stage where we follow things and never question, just because were told to...