#fy3

Just a lil F3 update for anyone who cares/is still active in this weird void - after doing a trust grade rotation in acute medicine, and at the same time doing MRCP part 2, I decided I needed a BREAK and took 2 months off work! It was amazing, best decision I’ve ever done. I spent time with family and did lots of my hobbies.

Since then I’ve basically been picking up a mix of acute med and A&E locum shifts - it’s so great, I can work when I want, I work fewer hours because the pay is a lot better than being in training, and I have so much control over my life. I got into IMT (yay!) for August so I’ll be back to full time then, but for now I’m enjoying the locum life! 

27/08/2020 20:31

I know, I know. This post is well-overdue, especially in view of the fact that my last post #49, was a long rant about how hard it is to apply for jobs. Good news is though, I’ve managed to get myself a job and rotate like all the other doctor cogs in the NHS (yay, conveyor belt!) 

As you can imagine, it’s been a month of big changes. New place, new hospital, new systems. 

But I have to be honest... I love it. 

I’m now working on an ICU, and I feel energised and motivated. Being stuck on surgery for eight months was enough for a lifetime. I guess the major advantage is that I know for sure that surgery is not where my heart lies. 

I don’t know much about IMT- as a current SHO nobody thought to explain to us what the younger generation are about to deal with. I got the impression that the last year of IMT would be exactly like being ST3 right now - being a reg, basically. But it could be that there is a subtle difference that I just haven’t been told about. I think it’d be better if training pathways were less restrictive. I’d have loved to do broad based training, but that was no longer an option for me. I think it should be as easy as reasonably possible to switch between training paths or specialties. We need to retain doctors who want to change specialty, or who aren’t sure, rather than put hurdles in their way.

I had the most bizarre locum shift yesterday... they put me on respiratory HDU which made me panic at first because I’ve never done a resp job and I’ve also never done HDU/ICU. But then when I got there I realised there’s only ten patients and they were all just chilling with solid plans in place from the consultant that morning, so there was nothing for me to even do!

Then the consultant came over and asked me what stage I’m at, and when he found out I’m about to start IMT and that PACES (an incredibly difficult medical OSCE) will be my next exam, he got really excited, started teaching me and told me all the patients I should go and examine. So I went round examining patients, reporting back to him and seeing if I’d picked up the right signs, he’d then grill me on the diagnosis. I felt like a medical student again! I was being paid locum rates to be a student.