the day my soul hurt

On Wednesday, I felt so much pain in my soul that I couldn't understand why I was doing this. It was so bad that the next day almost nothing could motivate me to even get out of bed. I was yelled at once and asked to "get out here." I was ignored by the attending physician, so much so that I think he may have glanced at me once, but he never asked who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I was barely acknowledged by the staff responsible for teaching me.

In the few weeks that I have been in the hospital I have begun to recognize that the level of stress is really high most of the time. On top of that most people don't get enough sleep. So that means that teaching is probably not a priority.

Problem is they are at a teaching hospital. So while patient care should always be number 1, no matter what, you have to be creative enough to mix in a little teaching. If not, go to a private practice where you don't have to deal with medical students. Not everyone has the ability to teach. I know that I am awful with small children or with those that don't have a base of knowledge. And I recognize that, so I am not going to put myself in a position where I am responsible for teaching them.

All I am saying is that text books can only get you so far. Medicine is still an apprenticeship. If it was all about learning stuff out of books I would have enjoyed the first two years of medical school a lot more, but it's not. I was excited about third year of medical school because I could finally see patients and see how to take care of them. The first few weeks have been awsome. I had learned so much from the people that have had the responsibility of teaching me. And in just one day, it was all seemed that I had just had a streak of good luck and that was over now.

I felt that from that day foward I would be ignored and if I was to learn I would have to do it on my own. I felt that in order to be someone in this field I would have to change my attitude and push people to pay attention to me and look out just for me. And that made me soo sad. I always believed that this was a team thing. Not one person had all the answers so we had to work together to make sure people got the care that they deserved. And part of that was teaching those new to the whole thing.

On Friday, however, I came to the realization that no matter what you do in life there are mean people. People who are selfish and don't care about you or anyone else for that matter. Somewhere, deep down, they may have had good intentions, but somehow they got lost along the way. No matter, though. All that means that there is one more reason why I should continue to be the way I am and make every effort to never be like that.

I love what I am learning and one day I will be good at it. I have met some wonderful doctors in the past four weeks and they far outnumber the not so good ones. I won't give up my dream just because it is not ideal. By the way, my soul doesn't hurt like it did that day. It was mended be a very pleasant pediatric orthopedist. There are good doctors out there, life just doesn't always cooperate to show that.

Wk.3

I love what I do. There I said it. Sometimes I doubt it, but being in the thick of things and finally starting to feel like I can make a small difference and actually help someone, even if it is just retracting, makes me feel good. Sometimes it is so hard to sit in class and accept that there is a certain amount of theory that must be learned before going into the hospital to take care of patients. The rewards of caring for people are so far removed that I wondered many times why I got myself into this mess. But now... I love it!