I Still Don’t Like Psychiatry

I didn’t have a great start to this rotation because I was told 10 days before I started that it was changing from a community to an hospital based post, but the upside was that I didn’t have to do on calls. I was also told that I could do outpatient clinics weekly if I wanted to, and I agreed to do one a week under supervision of a Consultant Psychiatrist.

3 days before these clinics were to start, I received an email informing me that I was now doing two clinics a week. No explanation or apology for the late notice; it was pretty much a ‘For Your Information’ thing. Ofcourse I was not having it, and refused to do the extra clinics because this wasn’t what I’d agreed to, it hadn’t been discussed with me, and it was unprofessional and just plain RUDE that this was being sprung on me like this.

I feel like this just sums up life as a junior doctor because you’re made to feel like a name on a spreadsheet being moved for service provision, without any consideration of the inconvenience or unfairness of it all. I have a life – being a doctor does not define it! It’s very unfair and I think I was absolutely justified in responding with emphasis on my disappointment in the poor communication and how badly it had all been handled. I am a doctor and deserve to be treated like a professional – the infantilisation and how junior doctors are treated in the NHS is really not okay.

So what was the resolution?

I decided to do the extra clinics because they’d already booked patients for them, and it would have been unfair on the patients to have their slots moved. If they hadn’t already booked these appointments, I would have definitely fought it more, but I chose to let it go.

Psychiatry 2 – 0 Tai

If they backtrack and say I have to do oncalls though, it is definitely NO and I’m ready to escalate to the BMA if necessary. Enough is enough!

Yet Another Failed Fit Test

The last two weeks have brought even further changes to our rotas. With the number of COVID cases gradually reducing in my hospital, services that had been put on hold are being restarted, and staff are slowly being redeployed back to their original wards.

So what has this meant for me? Well I’m no longer on a Gastro ward! After two months of life as a gastro junior doctor, I have now been sent back to my base ward- respiratory.

Not going to lie, after weeks of feeling drained and exhausted because of how busy the gastro ward was, I thought I would be more relieved to be going back, so I was surprised to find that I was actually a bit… sad?

Don’t get me wrong, life as a gastro junior was stressful AF, but I’m only now realising just how much I learned and grew as a doctor because of it. Spending many shifts as the only doctor on the ward meant I was reviewing patients on my own, which has increased my confidence with this. I’m also much quicker at getting through my jobs and A LOT better with cannulas- turns out situations involving patients with huge GI bleeds, who need transfusions ASAP, make you just get on with getting that cannula in without overthinking it, because the pressure is real, you know? I’m now pretty decent at taking bloods from IV drug users too, because we had quite a few of them on the ward throughout lockdown.

I learnt a lot about gastroenterology during my time on the ward- the registrars and consultants were always keen to teach, and I was very surprised to come to the realisation that I actually really like gastro physiology.

ALSO, have I mentioned that I now know how to do ascitic drains??? I don’t think it’s come up much…

Anyway, I’m grateful for my time on gastro, and I know that it has prepared me well for my gastro job next year as an F2 😊

In other news, being back on Respiratory means that I need to be Fit tested again, because I will be seeing respiratory/suspected COVID patients a lot more now. So I had my third Fit test last week with the smaller masks…

…. and I failed yet again. Sigh.

I’ve been told that the final option is for me to have a respirator mask, which is a lot sturdier and likely to fit. Currently trying to get that sorted before my on call shifts, and in the mean time, I am not to see suspected COVID patients/do ABGs on patients on NIV, because of increased risk of infection if I don’t have a secure mask. Here’s hoping I can get a respirator soon!

Finally, I had my antibody test results come back and not going to lie I was a bit disappointed by the negative result. But it means I most probably haven’t had COVID so we thank God! 🙏🏽