As this academic year draws to an end, it amazes me how fast time flies. Perhaps the word 'academic' isn't even right in this context because I have certainly been doing nothing remotely 'academic' since I graduated from Medical School last year.
This time last year, I remember starting out as a wide-eyed house officer, clueless to so many things. Starting a weekend day ward cover less than 2 weeks into my career as a junior doctor, I did not sit down for 12 hours that day and became hypoglycaemic. I remember going up to my SHO and helplessly asking him for help because I could not cannulate someone who needed IV Fluids. I remember someone going into acute pulmonary oedema on me into Day 2 of my career. The only achievement I can hold my head high to is that I *touch wood* did not burst into tears during any of my medical on calls or nights, even when faced with the most horrendous situations.
This time in 2 weeks I turn into an Orthopaedic SHO. Perhaps I had made too many snide jokes about my wanting to be an Orthopod in the past, that this is payback time. Perhaps I might actually want to be an Orthopod after this 4 month stint, who knows.
At this point in time, it is one year of my career as a doctor down....an indefinite number of years to go.
Don't get me wrong, there are times like now when I am on my set of nights with my nose dripping relentlessly and feeling rotten, that I wish I did not have to do night shifts, and I question my obsession (or ambition) to be a Cardiologist as such. I do think that it would be nice to have a job where I had normal working hours and did not bear such huge responsibility of whether someone lived or died just because of the mistakes I made.
Recently, I notice myself losing my temper all too quickly and my impatience mounting by the second when things are slow and don't go my way. I am uncompromising and demanding and I get annoyed when people are slow to understand things that I say.
And then I check myself right there. I detest stereotypes and the typical stereotypical female doctor lusting after a high-flying, stressful job is one of a Tiger Alpha Female who makes everyone else shudder from head to toe as soon as she turns her eye on them.
The role of a female surgeon or a high-flying, competitive medical specialty such as Cardiology paints the exact same stereotypical picture. As with my entry before on sense of style in the work environment, I refuse to conform to such stereotypes just because the 'norm' is such.
And yet there are days when I find myself so excited about ECGs and chest pain and heart failure and PCI's that it is sad. Even when my days on Cardiology were as a glorified secretary, sitting at my favourite spot on the ward typing on the computer furiously and doing referrals for CABG surgery to Southampton, I missed it when I was away and on call. With the same pace on Colorectal Surgery which I once loved and actually wanted to do, I feel no such attachment to my job and in fact, got so bored towards the end of my normal days on surgery that I was becoming rather cavalier about stuff.
It seems there is such a long path ahead to trudge on in this competitive journey of pushing everyone out of the way en-route to clinching that training number - it makes me wonder if I really have what it takes to become a Cardiologist.
Or more importantly, do I really want to....that badly?
But for the moment, let's live in the present. Now that I am fully GMC-registered as a fully qualified medical practitioner, I can doctor.
Or at least let's hope so.
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