sine curves

working life is like a sine curve (or a cosine curve, whichever rocks your socks).

i'm exhausted from running 2 wards by myself this last week, i get to work at 630 am and leave around 7 plus which not much chance to sit down in between save doing my millions of discharge summaries.
i know it's pretty easy to do my discharge summaries - there's a template! :D
but when i discharge close to 30 cases every morning (all must be done by 1130 am else the nurses get really really antsy and call me non-stop), on top of all the other things that need to be done in the wards like updating attendings/taking bloods/updating families/bringing CTGs down to be signed etc, it makes for one very stressed-out me.

at least one of my ward residents is this super nice lovely lady who doesn't need me to follow her around and is always patient.

i wish the same could be said of the guy resident in the other ward, who told me in no uncertain terms that he expects me to follow him around the whole morning to carry his files and scribble in them for his round. well, i don't mind doing that if i didn't have 2 wards to cover, thank you very much. he thinks i'm slacking off by not being there but the truth is, i'm still doing my NVD rounds in the other ward by the time he's finished with his rounds!
to top it off, he's quite a senior resident, moving on to the next level soon i think. so i feel really bad having to call him for anything i'm unsure of because he sounds rather disdainful. :\ just the other day i got scolded for making him come up to the ward to take consent from a patient - to be honest, in our guidebooks we're specifically told we can't take consent from patients in cases such as these, which is why i had to call him up. but he insists that i can take this consent and yelled at me and the nurses in the middle of the ward.

all these encounters with him have just left a really sour taste in my mouth whenever i see him, although if truth be told, i don't think he's that bad really. kind of naggy, but he's a good doctor i believe. i just wish that i wasn't running 2 wards so that i'd have time for all this!!!!

it's really crappified, this whole point about not having enough interns, and the workload distribution is rather uneven too. i think they've realised it because next month it's back to one person a ward, thankfully for whoever's coming up here.

then again, it's the last 2 days of hell running these 2 wards!!!! plus i'm on call tomorrow night too and with a not-so-friendly resident, booooo :(
wish me luck please!


but that doesn't mean there haven't been bright sparks throughout the days!
the nurses have been particularly nice, they help me as much as they can, and they tell me to leave early and that they'll call the on-call to do whatever comes after knock-off time because i think i'm really looking very haggard from all this stress (my friend was rather stunned when he saw me, said i looked very "mature". URGHHHHH). but that doesn't change the fact that mornings are really really bad, and getting several PPHs in the ward doesn't help to decrease my stress levels at all. oh well.

the other nice thing was meeting my previous attending in the lift with several CTGs to sign off, he just grabbed the whole bunch and signed them off for me! HOW NICE IS THAT????? i was so super touched! :D

good days and bad days, it's like a sine curve.
looking forward to leave like nothing before.
wish me luck!

1 month into my job!

1 month (and a week!) into my job, i've had fabulous days and awful-it's-all-going-down-the-drain-and-i-want-to-cry-so-badly days. but i'm surviving, oh yes i am :D

to whoever's following my blog, i am so honoured, really i am! can't believe anyone would want to read what i write, so thank you :D

just finished my 7th call on sat morning, dealing with (some) private patients really makes my blood boil. first you refuse all painkiller jabs, then you complain of pain, what do you expect me to do? to put my hand on you and say, "oh you're healed!" :( :( this boggles the mind.

plus there was a violent patient on my call too, scary stuff. lucky they called in 4 hunky young policemen (hahahaha eye candy for my weary eyes!) to escort the patient down. oh dearie me. my attending for the night came out of the room waving his hands in the air and clutching at his hair, wailing about why this had to happen to him. HAHAHA.

had dinner at 2 am, urghhhh stomach rumbled loudly all the way till then! but at least i had time to change at eat dinner at 2 am, hehe. so that's something to be grateful for!

had to call my resident to set a plug, one that i kept missing :( poor lady, i think she was going to cry! and my resident came, took one look at her and said, "oh look, there is a HUGE vein here, so BIG." and proceeded to glare at me as though i was some idiot, as if i didn't feel bad enough already, thanks. RARRRRR. and then, she proceeded to MISS THAT VERY HUGE BIG VEIN herself. WOWEEEE. i didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the patient's bedside!!!!! OMG.
in the end she picked an antecubital vein to poke (one that i could have gotten, arghhh). and she left me there with the patient who was complaining that she couldn't bend her elbow :( :( uh-oh i felt so super bad. arghhhh.

but morning came! and i had time for breakfast with the other interns, who were all as tired and weary as i was- coffee from the small cafe downstairs is a great perk me up! :D

survival rounds in the morning were madeness, i discharged 12 patients from one ward on top of doing post-natal rounds (patients that the resident didn't see! arghhh) and had to run up to the private ward to settle all kinds of ridiculous things. ARGHHHHHH.

managed to leave at 230 pm post-call, picked up my ringing phone on the train home only to hear one of my fellow interns in tears due to backstabbing from nurses and another intern. OH DEAR :( :( :( the poor girl!

ah this has been a depressing post, calls are generally depressing, ah well.
but i have to say that i love my new ward (we changeover every 2 weeks), and my onco attending is amazingly nice :D i adore him to bits and pieces!!!!
remind me to blog about labour ward next time! :D