Monday 29 August 2011

Pay Day!

The 24th was my first ever pay day as a Doctor. Lots of my colleagues were moaning about how little we got paid, but to be honest I still find it a novelty to think that I'm getting paid at all. To make the occasion we went on a big Jnr Doctors dinner and then out for some drinkies the evening after. It was lovely.

I've since been enjoying my life as a solvent, independent woman.

I went out and bought a pair of lovely goldfish who now live in a big tank on my desk, where I can sit and talk to them and watch them flippering about. Very relaxing. I also bought an umbrella. Considering the weather recently I see this as a massive investment. No doubt I'll leave it at home/in my car and still get drenched though. In fact a big part of my hope that by buying an expensive umbrella the weather will magically improve.

In the week I'm going to do the most important thing I have to do with this months wages (except paying of a big chunk of my credit card bill), which is to take PapaSunshine out for dinner.

Less excitingly for him today, I am taking PapaSunshine to A&E. On my day off no less. He developed pitting oedema up to his knees overnight on the weekend when I wasn't home. I have now got myself into a flurry of worry (ooooh, rhymes) over it. I have a differential diagnosis of all kinds of sinister stuff going on in my head. Fingers crossed it will be something simple and harmless and A&E will laugh at me.

Dr Sunshine xXx

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Small World

One of the strangest things for me about starting my new job is that it is in the nearest hospital to the town I grew up in. This leaves me having a multiple "gosh, what a small world" events every day.

Not only are a good 50% of the patients from my home town, but it turns out half the hospital staff seem to be related to people either I or my Dad know socially.

At least once a day I'll write a discharge notification and realise the GP is a parent of one of my friends. I get major paranoia that I'll do a bad job, they'll recognise my name, and I'll be dinner-table talk. "Oooh, remember that girl you went to school with? She's a useless doctor!". Needless to say my discharge notifications are unusually detailed.

Today I found out one of the child protection people is the Mum of one of my friends and she was very excited to see me on the ward. She asked if it felt weird being a doctor, but the weirdest thing is definitely being treated like a grown up by people who have known me since I was little.

In other work-related news I've finally pin pointed the person in charge of the audit I'm helping with. Can't wait to get stuck in, even if it does look like quite a lot of work! Fingers crossed I'll get to present it, I'm really missing doing presentations since leaving uni. I must love the sound of my own voice.

Now I've done 1/4 of my time in paeds I'm really getting the fear about moving to surgery. All the surgical FY1s look somewhere between death and tears 90% of the time when I see them. Eek!!

First pay day tomorrow... very excited. I have a feeling once I see the pay doesn't cover my credit card bill, I'll be much less excited.

Dr Sunshine xXx

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Settling In

Now that I've been on the ward for 3 weeks (if you include shadowing), I'm really starting to feel like I know what I'm doing. A lot of being an FY1 is like being a medical secretary. I now know the right numbers to call to talk to different people about different tests, I know the clinicians who are the most helpful and I know where to find people when talking on the phone just doesn't work. I'm also getting rather familar with the fax machine to refer patients.

Every time I send or receive something with "Dr Sunshine" on it, I still can't really believe it. I feel a bit naughty for even writing it. In fact if it wasn't for people constantly reminding me to, I probably wouldn't half the time.

It also feels really weird to introduce myself as one of the doctors. I always stress that I'm one of the junior doctors on the team, but even that feels like misleading people. I guess as time goes on it will slowly sink in.

I've also now done 2 paediatric cannulas. Neither really count, one was a 13 yr old and the other an 11 yr old. I'm going to aim for an under 10 this week. To make life more difficult our cannulas have changed this week too. Fabulous. I also said I'd let my med student practice on me... eek!

Now that I'm getting to grips with day to day life on the ward I need to get stuck in to my e-portfolio. I've done one case based discussion, but I really should make the most of having a lot of supervision around and encourage the registrars to go through more with me.

Just as importantly I need to start learning how to balance work, social life and sleep... I need about 5 hrs more a day!

Dr Sunshine xXx

Thursday 11 August 2011

Lack of Team Work

Before I get started on this rant I just want to point out that I love my job, and even when I'm ranty, tired and grotty it still gives me love butterflies... but still, everyone needs to rant.

Basically some of the new GP trainees on my ward are just not pulling their weight. I understand that these particular individuals either have no interest in paediatrics or hate hospital medicine, but that is no reason to dump on the FY1.

I got abandonned with the SHO on call bleep and the late shift on Monday with no notice because not one of them could cover for the person who couldn't come in (there are 6 of them) and swap a shift. The week before I did the same. Granted I either get paid or time off in lieu, but a bit of notice would be nice. So would a thank you.

In the case of 1 particular guy, he must be a magician. He manages to disappear for hours at a time, so I end up having to do most of his ward work. This is so frustrating. I've tried to say something about it before, but I think I was too subtle. If it happens next week I''m telling him I think it's unacceptable.

Just for a bit of balance some of the GP trainees are lovely and very useful. This fills me with a bit of faith for the profession.

On an unrelated but exciting note, tomorrow I'm doing my paediatric immeadiate lift support course. Hurrah! Very excited to learn about stablising sick children, especially with all the trips to a&e I've been taking with the reg, into resus, to see very sick kiddies.

On a less exciting note I scratched my car against a wall today. I had a coughing fit and hit the accelerator instead of the brake. Epic fail.

Dr Sunshine xXx

Saturday 6 August 2011

Organisational Compulsive Disorder

It is very lucky that I am anal about being organised. I seem to have so much going on that being any other way would lead to disaster.

Between actual work, mess present stuff, 3 presentations I'm doing to the paeds dept, my audit, planning to sit post grad exams and teaching medical students I have decided to not only keep my iPhone diary up to date, but have invested in a wall chart planner thing. It is awesome. It comes with stickers and everything. Every time I look at it I get the urge to plan even more stuff to fill it up.

I think the hard thing for me to do will be remembering to organise a bit of chill out time for myself or I will completely burn out. Everything is so exciting at the moment that I'm just go go go. I planned a lie in this morning and work up naturally at 7.30... no mean feat considering I was clubbing last night.

I seem to have fallen into being a real doctor quite well this week. There is a surprising amount of admin stuff which is endlessly frustrating when it involves spending hours on the phone and running to different departments, but this is all made up for by the stuff I get to do on the wards.

This week I got to help manage an acutely unwell wheezy toddler with the registrar as well as helping to diagnose and treat a case of meningitis. I learnt never to take things at face value in paeds. Our meningitis child turned up with a completely blanching vesicular rash, whereas you'd usually associate meningococcal septicaemia with a non-blanching pur-puric rash. Without assessing the patient as a whole it would have been so easy to dismiss the case as something less severe.

All the registrars I've met have been awesome. They're so willing to teach me as I've made it clear that I am very interested in a career in paediatrics.

I feel like a big loser as I'm actually looking forward to work on Monday. All the other FY1s were looking at me like I was nuts when I was in the pub on Thursday night because I admitted that I love my job even more than I expected to. Apparently being an FY1 in med or surgery doesn't inspire quite the same amount of love.

Dr Sunshine xXx

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Black Wednesday

It is the day everyone in the medical world dreads, the day that all the completely fresh FY1s start work and all the other SHOs change jobs. A day of pure chaos. Black Wednesday.

Thankfully I survived, but only just.

In paeds I am unbanded, so technically should only work a 40 hr week, Monday-Friday, 8.30-16.30. Today I worked from 7.30 - 21.30.

The first hour was nothing to do with paeds, I just had some mess things to do. This was mainly mingling with the new SHOs to let them know about our event this Friday, and also finding where the secret stash of jam was as the hungry surgeons were getting cranky. Well they always seem pretty cranky, but they were even crankier than usual (if that's possible).

After that the morning was busy due to a lack of SHOs (induction for them), but not insane. I got to do a few ward referrals and I mastered my negotiation skills over imaging. I also gave my hands a work out writing in the notes. There was a paediatric crash call too, which I got to attend with the reg. I only labelled the blood bottles and wrote stuff down, but it felt pretty doctory.

About 2.30pm the secretary came onto the ward to find me. The afternoon SHO who was supposed to be on call, admitting patients from the assessment unit hadn't turned up. As the SHOs tend to have no paeds experience, when there is suitable registrar supervision it's seen as acceptable for the FY1 to cover the shift. I ended up covering the shift. It was insane.

We had 1 more crash call which took an hour. After that I clerked, examined and made management plans for 4 sick children, spoke to the registrar about them all and learnt loads. The down side to this has been that my brain feels like it's going to explode and I'm exhausted. I didn't drink or pee all day! I did do a mini-CEX though. Hurrah for getting ePortfolio bits started.

Now I'm home I just have to iron an outfit for tomorrow and then I can curl up in bed. It's mess night tomorrow and I'm already exhausted. At this rate I think I'll be out no later than 10pm tomorrow. Pathetic I know.

Dr Sunshine xXx