Finally starting to settle in

It's been a week now working on the wards, and I think I'm finally beginning to find my feet. I'm getting used to the responsibility of looking after patients, and I'm starting to find work a whole lot of fun.

When I signed up for med school, I always envisaged that I'd be on my feet at work, running around doing lots of little odd jobs - and this is exactly what being an intern has turned out to be. The stress of having to fix up your mistakes has been a little overwhelming at times, but overall it has been manageable.

Yesterday was my first on-call shift. I was covering the wards from 1pm until 10.30pm. Heaps of things happened - apart from the usual calls to see patients who needed med charts written up or fluids charted, I certified my first death, I attempted to put an IV cannula into a patient 7 times (I failed, and ended up getting screamed at by an anaesthetist, who I had to call to help me), a patient pulled his PEG tube out (it's a feeding tube that goes directly into the stomach through the skin), I saw and assessed a confused patient, and I finished all my leftover paperwork from the week. Again, it was a little bit stressful, but well within my capacity to sort things out. And if anything ever went wrong I always had a registrar (more senior doctor) available on the phone to call.

So it's one day off, and then back to work again tomorrow!