A long time ago before I studied medicine, before even biomedicine, I used to volunteer in hospital. It was scary at first; most teenagers are out there having a life, meanwhile you’re wandering around on wards.
At first, I was worried I would get in the way. I mean, important stuff happens in hospital, right? There are lots of busy doctors and nurses rushing around and doing important things. Things that actually matter to patient care. I didn’t want to get in their way. I was even worried I’d trip up an important cable or get in the way of a ward round or something! As volunteers we could do all sorts of little jobs that other people weren’t being paid to do. We would go around with the library trolley or shop trolley. Or help re-stock gloves, hand gel and things like that on the wards. We directed lost visitors around the site. We helped with lunches. If you were unlucky, you’d be asked to do something less exciting like stuff envelopes. But sometimes, after a tiring week of revision, it was actually a nice break. I challenged myself to be as efficient at the repetitive tasks as I could be; they usually ran out of tasks sooner than expected! Pretty often, we got to chat with patients, which I really enjoyed. I got to know a lot of the ward sisters, and all the staff were really welcoming and pleasant.
I had little interaction with the doctors, though they were always polite and friendly when I was selling the poor juniors snacks from the shop trolley, which must have been a lifesaver in itself! I didn’t interact with the medical students. It never occurred to me to ask them questions about medicine; the mere thought of approaching anybody who was somebody was terrifying. I didn’t think what I did was meaningless, but I did feel it wasn’t that special. It was just all I could do at the time. And that was enough for me.
When I was a student, I still felt like an outsider in hospital. It takes all your guts to wander into a strange ward or an operating theatre armed with nothing more than your ID badge and a clinical handbook of medicine, and say ‘I’m… I’m the medical student?’ when they ask you who you are. To which they usually reply ‘Eh? I thought they were coming next week…’.
I can’t count the number of times I uttered the words ‘I’m just a medical student’. Because I couldn’t diagnose or treat or prescribe, it was easy to sometimes feel that whilst we were learning, we weren’t really doing anything to help. I remember our doctor tutors frequently telling us ‘you’re not just a medical student.’. It was pretty nice that they cared, but it didn’t stop us apologising constantly. It’s not that easy to change how you feel, after all. At some point, I resolved to stop using those words. And if I remember correctly, I mostly succeeded. But I only really gave them up when I had to: when those things actually became my job.
The further along we got, the more we wanted to learn how to do everything, and the more we devoted ourselves to mopping up any jobs we could help with. I loved to devote time to talking to patients; I couldn’t ‘clerk’ as a student without being drawn into long rambling conversations. I didn’t feel as invisible as when I was a volunteer, but you feel so constrained by what you can’t do that it’s still easy to overlook what you can. Especially when you first start on the wards.
But now, as a doctor, I can really appreciate that what I did back then wasn’t really insignificant at all. Not by a long shot. Because now, more than ever, I have to rely on every other person to do all the things I can’t do. Back when I was doing these things, I thought they weren’t that important because anyone can do them. Now I realise that although anyone can do them, most people in hospital can’t. Because there are so many other things that need doing. So many.
When there aren’t gloves anywhere, and there is no hand gel in any of the dispensers, it makes doing my job safely that little bit harder. When the proformas aren’t in place or cupboards aren’t stocked or the ward is a mess, life is a little harder. When the OR isn’t cleaned, it takes longer for the next operation to happen. When my patients are lonely, it makes their stay in hospital more painful than it should be. When there’s nobody there who can do bloods or a cannula or even just fill out some blood forms, we can become swamped in lots of little tasks. Add all these little things up, and you’ve got some pretty stressed doctors and nurses!
To anybody out there who feels insignificant because they’re ‘just’ helping with the little tasks; thank you. We couldn’t do it without you.
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