Things I Won’t Miss About Being a Hospital Doctor

As of last weekend, I am officially DONE with hospital jobs! My first GP rotation starts tomorrow, and I’m super excited- praying it goes better than my last job did, and I’m definitely looking forward to having even more evenings free, yay!

To summarise my time in hospital, here are some of the things I definitely won’t miss:

1. Ward rounds. I’ve never been a fan of how long and tedious they can be, especially when you’re just writing in the notes and not learning much.

2. Consultants borrowing my stethoscope and not wiping it down when they’re done- I’m very possessive over my stethoscope so this is really annoying.

3. Discharge and Flow Coordinators hounding me for patient discharge letters. Unwell patients are a bigger priority than those well enough to go home, but sometimes the need to clear beds and improve patient flow causes people to forget this. Grrrr.

4. The chaos of medicine ward cover and being bleeped for silly jobs- I’ve definitely become more blunt and firm because of this. Like, why are you bleeping me at 5:30pm to prescribe sleeping tablets for a patient??? NO.

5. Understaffed wards that meant I ended up doing the work of 3 doctors and didn’t get a proper lunch break sometimes.

To end on a positive note, here are some things I’ll miss:

1. Being on nights. I’m actually more of a night person and actually feel more awake during night shifts, so I tend to be more productive during them.

2. Watching patients interact with each other in their bays and become friends/make plans to meet up after discharge. Always so heartwarming!

3. Doing cannulas. Who would have thought that I’d miss THIS? I guess I’ve come so far since I used to struggle with them (we thank God!), so I now find them much easier and quite satisfying to put in.

Ahhh, what a journey it’s been. We had a team takeaway during my last shift and it was very wholesome. My last AMU weekend was with an Endocrine Consultant and Registrar, so atleast I got to have some Endocrine and Diabetes teaching in the end!

NO MORE HOSPITAL JOBS WOOOOOOO (But I’ll definitely be back to locum in ED, ofcourse 😉)

My Last Shift As A Gastro FY2 Doctor

What a whirlwind the last couple of weeks have been! I am officially in my last week as a FY2 doctor – tomorrow is my last post-take on call shift and then I will be DONE; we thank God!

Last Tuesday was my last shift on the ward, and I’ve spent the last couple of days visiting my dear aunty Funzie for a much needed retreat – it was so much fun and I’ve come back feeling refreshed and ready to change over jobs next week… but more on my post FY2 plans later.

In the month it’s been since I last updated this blog, I started and completed my on call night shifts, and my goodness, the hectic day shifts on the ward were definitely a breeze compared to how overwhelming the nights were. 1 doctor (me), covering 10 medical wards… it was A LOT.

I’m not going to go into detail about how they went because it took me a while to recover from how awful some of the shifts were, so here’s a haiku to sum up my nights:

Never ending bleeps,

Yay for helpful registrars,

Site team are the WORST.

Yupp. And in the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Moving swiftly on, how was my last day on the Gastro ward? I started the day hoping for a calm, relaxed shift; I was only meant to be working till 3pm because of allocated self development time, so surely the ward would be fine till then, right?

Yeah… WRONG.

My last day on the Gastro ward involved a patient self discharging, then being brought back to the ward by the Police because they had tried to take their life. This same patient also snuck alcohol on the ward, which they downed with some Paracetamol and Anadin, ofcourse. They then required holding powers (a.k.a sectioning) by me because they became aggressive and tried to leave the ward; all this whilst continuously threatening to take their life. Yupp. And this was just one patient.

Also on the ward that day was a patient who had an upper GI bleed that required an urgent endoscopy, as well as other acutely unwell patients with ascites and liver cirrhosis. Basically, it was all kicking off and with the Registrar dealing with urgent referrals around the hospital, I had to manage most of this by myself, whilst also being shadowed by the new FY1 doctor, so I even had an audience watching me trying to juggle everything!

I guess I can laugh now at the irony of me having to section a patient whilst on a GASTRO rotation – I really thought I was done with Psych after the draining four months of it I had but NOPE, I had to bring back a lot of my knowledge of holding powers to be able to correctly section the patient. I was the only one on the ward who knew how to do it, so I guess that was God trying to tell me that though my experience of Psych was quite distressing at times, I really learnt a lot from it, because I was able to apply a lot of my patient management skills from there to the suicidal patient on the ward.

My last day wasn’t all doom and gloom though – I got to do my first ascitic tap! It’s funny because I’ve done quite a few ascitic drains now but never a tap, so glad I was able to do it before leaving Gastro.

Despite how busy it’s been, I’ve really enjoyed my time on Gastroenterology. I find it so so interesting and I’ve learnt so much over the last four months. I would really consider it as a speciality if I didn’t have to go through being a Medical Registrar as part of training for it. Yeah Med Reg life, especially in a district general hospital, is most definitely not for me… *shudders*

Here’s to more regular updates now that my foundation training is coming to an end and I have a new job… but more on that in my next post 😉