Dear readers, I am officially done with my Psychiatry rotation and I AM FREEEEEEEEEE. AT LAST.
This has definitely been my most emotionally and physically draining job so far – I am well and truly exhausted. Psychiatry has been such a challenge for me, so I’m glad to be at the end; it’s been a very long four months!
So as always, a recap of the highs and lows of the job:
What was I good at? – Getting my documentation done during clinical reviews so that I didn’t have to type up notes afterwards. One of the pros of being a fast typer!
What made me nervous? – “New admission” are still two of my least favourite words, especially when oncall. I really had no idea what to expect when seeing patients sometimes because people present with psychiatric conditions in different ways, so every new patient encounter was always lowkey nerve-wracking because of this.
Useful thing I’ve learnt? – How to prescribe medication for rapid tranquilisation, which are drugs given intramuscularly for urgent patient sedation. The doses for these meds are now ingrained in my brain forever.
The last time I cried at work was? – My last day. And the day before that. And the day before that. And the day before that… yeah, I cried quite a lot towards the end of Psychiatry because I was starting to feel very overwhelmed by the demands of the job. Having to deal with being short staffed with high patient turn over, as well as being the most senior junior doctor on site most days and managing unwell patients was A LOT.
My happiest work moment so far was? – Again, my last day. The ward manager and nursing team gathered in the office to present me with leaving gifts as a thank you for my work on the ward. They told me that they’d noticed how hard I’d worked and how difficult it’d been for me, so they thought I’d “smashed it” overall. This meant so so much to me and I was such a speechless, teary mess. But happy tears this time!
Another happy work moment from my last day was being given this by the patient I’d had to be hidden from:
What a journey it’s been with this patient, so a very fitting end to it all.
A memorable non-med related thing I have done: I finally watched Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and it was amaaaaaaazing. I LOVE the book, and I was supposed to watch it in the cinema last year… but then lockdown happened. I’ve put off watching it for months because of how gutted I was at not being able to see it on the big screen, so finally watching it was really quite something for me.
Anyway, here I am on my last day on the Psych ward:
#freeasabird
Life As A Junior Doctor 