#fy1

2 consecutive SEU (surgical emergency unit) shifts alhamdulillah survived! 💛

yesterday was quite a bit of anxiety but got through ok, it was just being in a different team and speciality AND hospital but alhamdulillah did ok

today was a lot better even tho it was the weekend and less staffed, I felt more confident but also had a good team including a nurse practictioner who I asked for help when I wasn’t sure 🫶🏽

Medical students/F1s/F2s:

Check out Mind the Bleep, a free online resource for medical education! It has lots of articles with a focus on practical content (i.e. what should you actually do when confronted with a patient with XYZ), and also free weekly webinars you can sign up for!

“Annual leave already?? You’ve barely done any work!” - my dad jokes when I make the journey home for a few days during my much longed for annual leave.

I jump to justify my need for time off, time away from the hospital using physical, measurable aspects of the job - how I’d worked almost 120 hours over the previous two weeks, how I’d been alternating sets of nights and days, how often I’d end up eating my packed lunch for dinner, how I’d discovered that if you ignore the desire to pee long enough - it goes away. Tangibly difficult things about the job.

And just like that I realise there are aspects of my job that I will probably never discuss with my parents. My parents are not medical, they work in STEM fields, but they’re not medical and there are things about what I do that I think just would never even occur to them.

How just two short months post graduation I’ve pondered the absolute craziness that I, as a fresh faced doctor of a couple weeks experience, have had to manage the emotional fallout of -

Writing “this may represent a terminal event” in multiple peoples notes, all times of the day - and the weight of what those words carry

Waking people up in the night to quietly inform them that they have indeed had a heart attack - and that one time a quiet voice in the dark just replied to me “I knew it”

Experiencing that fear that washes over you when you turn the corner to see the patient you’ve been called about and realise that this is a patient who needs a senior review now, before I’ve even introduced myself, before I even check their obs or their drug kardex

Shouting “can I get some help in here please” in exactly that tone and cadence that every healthcare professional understands is enough to convey that something very serious is occurring behind this curtain

Explaining to grief stricken relatives, the precise process of confirming their loved one is dead, and asking whether they would like to go and have a cup of tea whilst I do this job - and the quiet stillness of the room when they leave

That I, as a 25 year old who continues to celebrate the arrival of a pay check as if it is a miracle I thought may never happen, have had discussions with relatives over a strangers mobile phone, advising them that perhaps if they feel like they need to come in, that they should come in but that I could not predict whether they should come in, if you know what I mean.

Me - the 25 year old with no life experience and mismatching socks and who woke up too late to have breakfast and who keeps of forgetting to phone home at a reasonable hour - I have experienced these staggering, emotionally charged, emotionally draining scenarios. And then I just go home and make my dinner and watch some tv and go to bed.

And sitting on the train or standing in the queue at Tesco’s and thinking that to everybody else around me I’m yet another 25 year old who looks like 21, and how the world has no clue what has happened, and that even when the worst happens and it feels like the world should have stopped - people keep on going, the clocks keep on turning.

That bizarre freedom that nobody knows who I am, nobody looks at me as if I should know exactly what is going on and exactly what to do about it.

My parents will probably never understand how it feels to gently hold a persons hand as they struggle to breathe, with the hopes of managing to soothe them enough so they can tolerate their non-invasive ventilation mask. And why should they?

It’s a massive, and quite true, stereotype that whenever medics get together, conversation will always regress into chat about work. And actually - how could it not? Now I look at my fellow FY1s and realise that we’re all becoming slowly filled with these intimate, delicate, highly charged experiences, and that drive to offload is there - but only to somebody who understands.

"Welcome to your life, there's no turning back." These lyrics from Everybody Wants to Rule the World are stuck in my mind as I begin my internship as a junior doctor. I thought I knew the meaning of resilience, altruism and empathy but I never knew my patience would be stretched thin by the inflexible working hours. It's only been a week and I already question my decision to pursue medicine as a career. Medical school was tough, but internship seems like a totally different world. I'm supposed to run on minimum sleep and caffeine and still be at my maximum efficiency.

Sixty hours

You gotta be tough

Sixty hours

It’s ten minutes of a sunrise every day

and then time is lost as you walk the long white corridors

Sixty hours

And a thousand conversations, people sad

Afraid, relieved, surprised, beaten,

about to live through their worst days while we

look on

try to comfort

share in the pain

But not too much or I will break

and we can’t have that, can we?

Sixty hours

The alarm goes off, a girl screams, she’s shaking, she’s dying

oh no she’s not

I feel impotent, thank God the others aren’t.

I mean, I know what to do

(don’t I?)

but I get too involved and can’t move my feet,

hope the others didn’t notice...

A phone call, a patient has died

A bleep, can you check this one is dead? He’s still warm - 

They say we should prioritise the living, the dead are

at peace

hopefully

Sixty hours

I can’t stop thinking about the man from last week. I told him

He had cancer - I had to - and his family and

then I had to take away his will when he was afraid of murder

and then I can’t bring myself to take away her choice to stay with her partner 

who hurts and steals and bullies because 

she says she’ll be okay.

Who gave me the right?

Sixty hours

My father told me, expect to leave two hours late every day. 

Then you’ll be happy when it’s only one hour.

But it still doesn’t feel fair. 

It doesn’t feel fair that that a son should be told his father is dying, or

a person’s will is taken away when they are under the delusion they are sane

or a criminal gets the best care when he is abusing it or a disabled man 

can’t tell us what’s wrong

or I forget the name of a patient who died.

There’s only so much brain space and when you’re overwhelmed by 

the problems of today and can barely remember last week, much less 

last month because you’re always so tired and behind and it’s

work eat sleep repeat - 

But you chose this, right?

Sixty hours

And it’s worth it when you make that person smile,

When you’ve got the diagnosis and can start treatment,

When you’ve managed someone’s pain,

When somebody understands what’s going on because you’ve 

taken the time to explain.

When someone says, ‘Thank you, doctor!’

Doctor

The word still feels unfamiliar

I still feel like a child playing dress-up.

But I gotta believe that’s how they see me -

when people say I’m ‘hardworking’, ‘on it’, ‘capable’,

‘communicate effectively’, ‘a good team player’

when inside I’m still shaking...

Sixty hours

with thousands more to come 

So far, it’s still worth it.

And maybe one day I’ll feel competent,