F2: My first week as an SHO...
I have been looking forward to finishing F1 since my first day on the job, now I would give anything to have it back. I don't know if this is because I have started on Obs and Gynae and it is super specialised, but I literally haven't got a clue what I am doing. It's just like F1 in that respect I guess, only now my badge reads "senior house officer", which sounds like a person who should know what they are doing. It is also the same title that obs and gynae trainees (people who have been doing this for two years and know shit) share, meaning people expect me to know shit.. I was put in gynae clinic on my first day, I had my own room, a dictaphone to dictate clinic letters and a list of new patients waiting for some specialist advice... And in they walk to see me, barely looking old enough to have left school. When did i go from being the care free medical student sitting leisurely in the back of a clinic, to the situation I am now faced with. The last time I even read about gynae was at least three years ago, and my experience in the field could be listed on a stamp. I stuttered while enquiring about their heavy menstrual bleeding, blushed while asking if they are sexually active (to my surprise SO many old people are..) and clumsily inserted speculums, pretending I knew what I was looking at and taking swabs from around what could possibly be the cervix. What the actual fuck is that about. Ok, so the consultant would ask me my findings every now and again, but he trusted my history, he believed me when I said the examination was normal.. These poor, poor patients. That was a piece of cake though compared to the on calls. Women in labour aren't fun at the best of times, but throw in a bit (or a lot) of bleeding and a high EWS (a score devised to detect deteriorating patients) and I would literally rather pull out my own teeth. The midwives, experts in the field of labouring woman, look at someone like me for a plan when shit hits the fan, I can barely point out who is and isn't pregnant in the city I currently work in and you want ME to deal with this shit?! It's laughable. You show a bit of weakness and people huff, even the reg's, my main senior support, will say things like "come on, use your initiative" when you dare to ask how to do something. I'm not sure what kind of initiative allows you to pull random unknown information out of your arse to construct a logical assessment of something you know absolutely nothing about, but if anyone can show me it I would love them for ever..