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!

Watch out, new doctor coming through

Today was the first day we hit the wards as fully-fledged doctors. We were supposed to be shadowing the intern who we're taking over from on Monday (the first 'official' day), however due to some staff shortages, some of us had to actually do a fair bit of work. My first job is Cardiology, which consists of three alternating weeks between the cardiology ward, the coronary care unit, and the day procedure unit. Because there are three of us interns covering the three different areas, it is meant to be a somewhat cruisy job.

Having said that, being a real doctor is f#cking scary. Charts get thrust in front of your face, medications need to be written and signed off, and every mistake you make is accountable to you - because you wrote your name on it and signed the stupid piece of paper. Life as a student seemed so much easer - there was no responsibility, you could do all the work yet not actually have any responsibility for any mistakes, and you could leave pretty much whenever you wanted to. Now, if I want to leave, I can't. If I mess up, it's my head on the chopping block. If I see a patient, I'm the real deal. I'm the doctor. It's been very nerve-racking so far. However, its still a massive adrenaline rush to be finally doing what I've trained for six years to be doing. I can't wait till I get used to the place and I can start properly enjoying the work. Here's hoping the fire never dies!

First day of work

Happy New Year everyone!

Today was my first paid day as a doctor.

Well, not exactly - I didn't actually do any 'doctor-type' real work today, just sat through a day full of lectures and tried very hard not to fall asleep. It's our introductory week, a week full of lectures and 'revision seminars', or in other words, cramming our brains with stuff we have already learned but managed to forget since our final exams two months ago.

But we get paid for it! Which is a far cry from medical school, where we paid through the nose for similar teaching. Unfortunately, from looking at my roster, I'm not going to have very much time to enjoy using my money. Oh well. I'll just have to use ebay instead.

Most of the new interns at SCGH are fellow UWA graduates. But there were a few unfamiliar faces amongst the crowd - there are three graduates from interstate, coming back home to Perth to begin their new careers as doctors alongside the rest of us. It was a weird feeling talking to them - because unlike school or university, I will probably hardly ever see them again, and thus forming friendships is going to be unlikely. Hopefully we get to know them better through all the social events this year.

Work officially starts in earnest next Monday. My first term is going to be Cardiology. Having never worked a term there as a medical student, it will be interesting to see how I go - iin any case I'm quietly confident in my ability to handle being an intern. There are two other interns working the same job as me first up. Both of them are great girls and I'm really looking forward to working with them and having some fun. It should be a great year.