Hippitus Hoppitus

It borders on hilarious when you're in a ' specialist training' programme and the main thing you do during an acute medical take is to go around taking blood off patients and insertion cannulas. The way things are organised during the weekend essentially means that for a fair amount of the time that I'm on duty, I play the role of a glorified phlebotomist.

(I'm currently watching a South Park episode in which a bunny is meant to be the head of the church...weird, but funny).

Needless to say, I didn't quite enjoy my on-call yesterday. For numerous reasons. And once again, if organisational issues were sorted out beforehand, there wouldn't be as many situations during out-of-hours in which people run around like headless chickens.

The first week of working in the respiratory ward has passed by rather quickly though. It was pretty much what I had expected it to be - the wards aren't as posh (compared to cardiology), there is a perennial lack of staff and it's awfully busy (which means you almost never have a moment's rest).


In a sense though, I am enjoying it more than cardiology. Primarily because there is a much larger variety of cases and also because for the better part of the week, I'm the most senior person on the ward. Which means that I have the rather scary (yet satisfying) role of ensuring that the ward runs smoothly.

There are disadvantages to it though - there is no senior lead, which means I don't get as much teaching as I should be getting, and as the place is so damn busy, I'm not allowed to go to clinics and bronchoscopy sessions and the like.

I'm been quite lucky to have rather good junior doctors in my team though. Common-sense and enthusiasm goes a long way, and 2 of them especially have gone that extra mile to help out with things. Funny thing is, my duties will be taking me off the ward 'till early next month, so I'll need to get used to things again in the not too distant future.

Ah well...can't really complain though. I'm sure I'll be having a great time over the Christmas season.