Hi friends. It’s me, MJ.

Since we last chatted I leveled up to PGY-2! I’m almost 3 months into my second year of residency and boy, do I have some thoughts. 

Thought #1: senioring is hard

Being a senior has certainly come with its challenges. Sure, I knew that I would have to know the bigger picture of the patients and be expected to manage an entire team of 15-20 patients. I knew that I’d have to help my interns figure out their workflow, make sure the sub-interns are getting enough experience, and that the medical students feel like they’re part of the team. I knew that I’d have to stay late on some days to finish up work for the night team and give sign out to the night team. 

But I didn’t know that finding the balance of doing just enough to help out the interns without overstepping them or doing everything would be so hard.

I’m a go-getter. I like to get tasks done, and it’s been difficult for me to sit back and be hands-off and let the interns get the experience of calling consults, calling pharmacies, and doing discharges. I know it’s important for them to learn these tasks, but when I have rotators that are unfamiliar with the system that are learning how to do admissions, write notes, and put in orders sometimes it’s just easier to do myself. 

Thought #2: your team is your team

If your interns miss something, if labs aren’t ordered correctly or imaging isn’t scheduled right, it falls back on you. I felt this very hard today when a patient got an MRI of the abdomen & pelvis instead of a whole body MRI like the consulting physician recommended. (In my defense, this was not relayed to me personally and the consulting physician’s note was completed after I left work so these recommendations were not known to me until the next day.) But still, since I am the senior on the team I should have recognized this lack of foresight and planned accordingly. 

Thought #3: it’s exhausting

Since I have to stay late to give sign out, tidy up loose ends for the night team, and follow-up on every little detail, I often stay 1-2 hours after my shift has ended. I’ve worked 70 hours a week in the last two weeks and 23 in the last two days. I have little time for anything else when I get home and as a result have barely seen my fiance. Trying to make time for self-care, but it’s not the easiest.

Thought #4: it’s compiling

I’m on a current 3 month stretch of inpatient floor blocks. I finished NICU, now I’m on the busiest inpatient service in the hospital right now, and next month I move on to inpatient heme/onc where the hours are 6-6 and you get two weekends off. Oh, and I’m by myself. 

On top of my current schedule, trying to finish all the mandated busy work (ILPs, annual learning modules, IHI modules), trying to coordinate and run a new QI project I started last year, do a literature review for a research project, and participate in 2-3 other projects, I’m starting to feel stretched thin. 

Oh, and not to mention I’m also trying to plan my postponed COVID wedding and my elopement in November. 

And stressing about my chief interviews later this month.

And also trying to be a good senior.

Cue the mental breakdown.

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All in all, it’s been everything and not at all what I expected. We had a wellness lecture today about physician burnout that I think just put a lot of things into perspective for me about how I’m feeling. Writing this post is sort of my way of getting all my thoughts out and to cope with how I’m doing. To end this post, here are some good things that I’m doing in order to allow myself to be the best version of myself that I can be:

1. I reached out to my therapist today to schedule a long overdue session.

2. I bought two bags of Halloween candy for my team to bring in tomorrow.

3. I created a gift bag of goodies for one of my co-seniors who didn’t get the job that she applied for to make her feel better.

4. Tonight I sat down and emailed a bunch of people for the wedding aka the officiant, the restaurant I want to host the after meal celebration at, and the hotels for our new wedding room block.

5. I’m going to share this post with my fiance since I didn’t have the energy to organize all of these thoughts earlier when I came home.

6. I’m going to go to bed now.