Frustration incorporated

For better or for worse, one of the things that tend to develop within you when you’re a registrar is a sense of ownership of your patients. You tend to not work for someone, but more for yourself as you feel that you have the added responsibility of ensuring that things run smoothly during the continuum of care.

The plus point is the fact that one automatically becomes more conscientious, and this has its knock-on effects with regards to making you think on your feet and be extremely organised with your day, as you have to juggle an n number of variables throughout the working hours.

The downside of this is the fact that you can get immensely frustrated when your junior does not perform the way you expect or want them to. It is a rather tiring job having to double check things or waiting for things to be done in an hour, especially if you can do said job in ten minutes. And it’s even more tiresome to listen to nonsensical excuses that make you want to grab the guy’s head and pulverise it to a pulp.

But one has to learn to inhale. And exhale. And have a listen to some music over the iPhone. Before going back and trying to remember that failure to delegate is failure to manage and that I have to spend time teaching, even if it’s something as basic as ‘blood tests that you ordered need to be looked at’.

Inhale. Exhale.