Bored on a wire

Internship is all about balance.  People will give you all sorts of garbage advice about work/life balance.  It's garbage because it's impossible.  Work wins.  Life loses.  The end.

No, the balance I am talking about is the balance of how you spend your time at work.  At various times you are working for the patients, and at other times you are working for the consultant (the big boss).  Very occasionally you are working for yourself, such as when you go and get a cup of coffee or sneak off to open your bowels.  Refer to my previous comments about work vs life.  Pooping is life and is to be savoured as it arises.

So anyway, I was talking about patients vs consultants.  This is something I struggle with.  I tend to get caught up in spending lots of time talking to patients and their families.  Nobody else but the intern bothers to take the time to explain what the test results are, what they mean, what the prognosis is, what else might happen, whether or not this is all someone's fault or not, and in as much plain English as can be mustered.

I tend to spend a fair bit of time on this because:

1. Ostensibly it's what the hospital is there for.
2. I feel sorry for these people that Life has dealt a bad hand too and I want to help them out.
3. When I do it, they always say really nice things to me later on when they leave hospital about what a great doctor I am.

So it's a mix of idealism and rampaging ego that motivates me.

Unfortunately, spending my time working for patients means that every now and then my consultant misses out.  Such as the other day when I was busy explaining to my patient's family what was going to happen now that we'd discovered that a lot of bad shit was going down with him.  It meant that I was 5 minutes late to a drug rep talk about some new drug that does the same thing as some existing drug except it costs more.  It had been arranged by my consultant and clearly his dignity was bruised that I hadn't prioritised it above all else.  I could tell this because he said to me, "If you can't be bothered turning up to education sessions you can get the fuck off my ward."

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I've got the balance just about right.

Count down

T-3 days and counting.  I can't wait to get out.

I've reached the point where, when I'm at the clinic, I'm watching the clock.  At 9.30 I'm thinking that it's only an hour until 10.30 at which point it'll be halfway to lunchtime, at which point the day will be half over, and when it's over I can go home.  And when I go home I get to talk to my Smaller Half, light the fire, roast chestnuts, make potato soup, go the gym, read a good book, and do all those things that I'd prefer to do pretty much anytime rather than think about medicine.  Sadly, I've reached the point where I'm feeling demoralized and disinterested.

The strange thing is that I'm still enjoying my sessions with specialists.  Even though sometimes they are quite rude to me, the thing that's different about the specialists is that they seem to have some appreciation that it's unrealistic to expect to know how to do their job so they bother to explain things to me and are generous with their time.  The GPs that I spend most of my days with, however, seem to be constantly astonished at my ignorance.  The other day I asked one of them a question and his answer was, "How long have you been here?" - his point being, presumably, that I must be a dumb lazy piece of shit or else I wouldn't have to ask that question.

The three weeks of holiday that I have coming up will be a godsend.  With a bit of luck, by the time they are over I'll be so panicked about the exams in November that I won't have time to feel all precious and fragile about jerks being rude to me.  Fingers crossed!

Agony Aunt 2

Dear PTR,


I need your advice!  I'm a terrible procrastinator, so I often find myself with plenty of time on my hands while the urgent stuff piles up, looming over me like a reef break.  But since I took your previous advice and enrolled in a medical degree, I find that I don't have any friends, hobbies, nearby relatives or private interests.  Clearly I can't spend time actually studying - that would be preposterous.  So what can I do?

Ideally I'd like an activity where I can unleash my boundless creativity.  Something involving writing would be great, since nothing tangible is created so my procrastination will have nothing to sink its hooks into.  In the past people have laughed at things I've said, so it would be good if I could come up with a way of just spewing out all this garbage that comes into my head during the day without regard to social niceties.  Sure, maybe a few people will give me some kind of feedback, but wouldn't it be great if I had ultimate control over that too so I could simply remove any response that didn't stoke my flaming ego.

I am also very opinionated and like ranting and raving about things of which I am ignorant.  Considering alternate points of view is too hard, so some kind of way of expressing myself at great length in a pompous and pious tone would be nice.  Oh, and I am a deeply sensitive person, so from time to time I would like to show people a picture I have taken of a sunset or a cloud or a little baby duckling snuggling up to a tiger.  In fact, I would probably just steal the picture from some other website and publish it without attribution, but I'm still sensitive, right?

Perhaps I could also find some way of telling stories about the things I do which show how funny, clever, brave and self-deprecating I am.   It would also be nice if I could indulge myself by being ironic a lot.

Any suggestions?
(signed)
Idealistic in Adelaide


Dear Idealistic in Adelaide,

You should start a blog immediately.

Sincerely,
PTR

Agony Aunt

Dear PTR,


I desperately need your advice!  I'm bored with my current job and need help deciding what to do next. 


My current job is extremely boring and predictable - I want something with a little more excitement.  For example, I enjoy getting confusing and contradictory feedback on my performance depending on the whimsy and caprice of whoever happens to be in the room at the time.  In particular, I like being taught six different ways to do the same thing, with each new teacher emphasizing how terribly mistaken the previous teachers were.  I also like to be given ambiguous tasks in language which is easily misinterpreted.  When I fail to complete the task adequately because my telepathic powers failed that day and I was unable to read minds, I would like to be scolded for being timid or unreliable.


I don't have many friends, and I don't like the ones I do have, so it would be convenient it this new job could suck up as much time as possible and, if possible, destroy my social life by making my schedule irregular and unpredictable and by otherwise making me feel extremely guilty if I do attempt to enjoy myself.  In fact, the guilt thing is very important - my ideal career would be one in which success is difficult if not impossible to measure, thus leaving me a neurotic mess as I have no idea when enough is enough.  Needless to say, the added benefits of my new job being completely unpaid would add a certain je ne sais quoi.


In order to remind me that it's a job and not a hobby, it would also be good if many of the people in this new job were unpleasant, egotistical, arrogant, abrasive, selfish, or just plain mean.  Naturally, a majority of people will not be like this at all, but it would be nice if the awful people were SO awful that they SEEM like the majority.


Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
(signed)
Idealistic of Adelaide


Dear Idealistic of Adelaide,

You should enrol in a medical degree immediately.  Good luck!

Sincerely,
PTR