soul is back, sanity gone now

In the last month things have certainly turned around. I am at a different hospital with different people on my team and different feelings about the field of medicine and ever soo glad that I made some changes in my life.

Most of my life in centered around work/school, so that is where I will start. The new hospital where I am at is the kind of community hospital where I always imagined myself working. You know, lots of people who need lots of help and have, most of the time, waited too long to get help. I feel useful, even if I am just translating and holding their hand, which is what I have been doing alot. And helping people in those tiny ways feeds my soul, enough as of right now, to keep going.

Unlike last month, where it was the attendings and the residents that took my soul because they behaved in ways that I could not understand or incorporate into my definition of a teaching institution, now it is those that people that I considered my cohorts, even friends, that make life that much harder. It is amazing to me how disappointed and heartbroken I was after being treated badly by those responsible for me, and how angry I am to be treated worse by my classmates. I have been told on two occasions, by two very different people that I trust, to just play the game. And I know they say it because that might be the only way to learn and help more people, but I just can't. You may ask, "what game?"

A typical day begins with rounds (we go to each patient's room and check up on them, change their dressings if needed). Then, we are given jobs to do (draw blood, remove sutures/staples, etc.) We then go to clinic or to the OR. Then throughout the day we have more stuff that may come up that we are responsible for doing. By tradition, when walking from room to room, the group walks according to rank (med students last). I have no problem with this, the unfortunate thing is that by the time I get in the room, every one else (all 7 people) have poked and prodded the patient, that I have no desire to make them even more uncomfortable. If dressings need to be changed, the same two people make their way to the dressing, whether or not I was standing there to begin with. Fine, not a problem, whatever. Then when given "scut" work to do, everyone has to yell over eachother to get the job. It is always a race to see who is faster and louder. The problem with things like that are that the more work you do, the more work they will let you do because they (the residents) will start trusting you. As of right now, I barely get to do anything because it just feels like I am fighting with my classmates for it. And I just can't put my mind around why it happens that way. And on top of that there are those times where I am forgotten by the team and no one waits for me or picks ups extra copies of whatever sheet we need (when for some reason, I try my best to always make sure everyone else knows what is going on.) What ever happened to being considerate of others and us being a team, taking turns, etc? And I would start to play the game, but I can't see how that would benefit our patients or us as a team for that matter. Sure I could get stuff for me to do, but that is only continue to make the competition worse. That is my dilemma.

I want to be a good doctor, I am just afraid that my passivenss won't let me get the experience I need to treat my patients. I know the game and I could play it, but I won't be proud of my behavior. And that is where the real problem lies. This year requires a lot of changes from me. I see my attendings and the residents and they are good people, good doctors, good teachers. They had to have gone through the exact same thing I am going through and they survived and they treat their patients well, but did they play the game?? If so, how did they do it without being disappointed with themselves? And how do I work with people who just piss me off?

As with anything else, I wondered what my classmates thought about my abilities. And, even if I didn't want to, I wondered if they thought I was stupid or lazy because of what had been going on. And then a couple of nights ago, I was reassured. A bunch of us were at a bar, and out of what I thought was nowhere, one of the girls comes up to group of people that I was talking to, and says, "hey guys, this girl is going to be an awsome doctor." I looked at her a little bewildered (it was late and we were under the influence of letting go of all responsibilities for an evening), and asked, "what are talking about, I don't know more than you, i don't do anything." and her response was, "you are soo good with patients. you guys should see her, she is great with them, she is going to be such a good doctor." I didn't know what to say. I did say thank you, because that is the polite thing to do. But it threw me off a bit. When I finally recovered I realize that someone who's opinion I trusted, who usually didn't piss me off, and who worked closely with me, thought something good about me. And that is when I decided that for the time being, no matter how much it pisses me off and no matter what the consequences of my behavior are with my grade, I won't play this game with these players, because it isn't fun and they aren't worth it. No matter how crazy I go within the next two weeks, I know it will be fine because at least one person believes in me. So if you hear me bitch and whine, let me go on for a while and then remind me that it will work out because somebody will notice that I do good for my patients.