Work – Page 4 – Ramsay Family Classics

Happy VD

(This is something of an extremely retrospective blog entry, given that the initial idea was laid down 6 months ago)

Today is St Valentine’s day, with all the corporately driven romantic BS that goes with it. Sure, I did some stuff to remind Simone that I really like her (a lot…) and that the only times I find our relationship frustrating are those times I can’t be with her, but I still was generally sceptical about the whole “you should express your affections today because Hallmark say so” sentiment underlying it all (did you know that Japan has separate Valentine’s type days, one for men to give to women and vice versa?).

That aside, I think that the funniest part of the day was when Sarah, one of the ortho reg’s I’m currently working with, arrived and announced to everyone in earshot, “Good morning everyone, Happy VD”. Now of course we all got the double entendre and chortled accordingly. Just like VD, Valentines days was one of those things that you ended up having inflicted upon you when you fell in love, and were cursed with for the rest of your life, whether you were still in love or not. 🙂

I thing that warrants a drink (or 2)

Today has turned out to be a pretty damn good day.

First of all, it was the last day of my internal medicine term (which I have ranted against on previous entries). We discharged 1/3 of our patients, and managed to finish the ward round in time for lunch. I even made it out the door only 1 hour after my scheduled finishing time (thanks to a few “Oh, Dave’s meant to go home in 5 minutes, let’s ring him with jobs we could have told him about an hour ago, but didn’t” calls).

Then I got home to be greeted by Jack at the door and a letter in the mail telling me that I had been successful in my application for the basic surgical training program. YAY!!!!

As such I am having a few drinks (well perhaps that’s understating it a bit). I want to dance. I want to sing. I want to hug the world.

(I’m sure I’ll get over it by tomorrow :-)Â )

Good food migration

It’s been quite funny around Logan for the last week and a bit, because a week and a bit ago a Subway opened within lunchtime walking distance from the hospital, and while the hospital canteen serves OK food, it has something of a leaning towards pies, battered fish, chips, and other grease heavy offerings, and the volunteer staff, while being well meaning, are not not necessarily the most efficient.

So having a healthy(-er) option with the variety you get in Subway opening up 5 minutes walk away has resulted in something of a daily lunchtime staff exodus across the road.

Pretty much the same thing happened when a stairbucks opened in the food court at the PA Hospital (say what you will about Starbucks’ coffee, it’s still better than hospital tuck shop coffee, which as often as not comes out of a large tin with the word “instant” somewhere on the label). While they didn’t sell meal food (rumor has it that this was because the hospital administration made it a condition of the lease, as they did not want Starbucks competing with (and presumably thrashing the pants off of) the hospital tuck shop) they must have been making a fortune off of all the coffee they were selling the staff.

It always makes me wondner whether the economics would be better from leasing an area out to something like starbucks or subway, rather than trying to make a profit out of a hospital run food shop (with all the spectacular ineffciencies that are inherent in any public sector organisation).

Trial separation

After 14 months together we are having a trial separation.

Now before you all go getting startled, this is simply a stupid work thing.

Both being doctors on career paths, we knew and had discussed even before we got married the probability that at some point we would be sent to different places apart from one another for some period of time. It’s a sad reality, and it’s just a little irritating that it’s had to happen so soon.

Simone has finished her job doing paediatric surgery at the Mater, and is now set to spend the next 6 months doing general surgery at Nambour hospital, about 2 hours north of our house.
I’ve been scheming constantly for most of the last week, trying to figure out a last minute way out of it, since I frankly rather like having my girl around to come home to in the afternoons, do stuff with in the evenings, and snuggle with at night (and while Jack is admirably fluffy, friendly and cuddly, he isn’t quite up to the task of substitution).

It’s close enough that we can spend weekends together, and as it involves significantly less on call than the Paeds job did, we will hopefully be able to have good quality time on those weekends, but it still kinda sucks.

On weekdays however, since I no longer have a moderating female influence around, there will be frequent parties, poker nights and keg offs. Jack tells me he’s got a huge one in the works for wednesday already, and all his biker mates are coming, so if you don’t have other plans, drop in, bring some vodka, and don’t forget your pool cue for the inevitable end of party front lawn fight.

And when that’s done I’ve heard rumors about teddy organising jelly, handcuffs, and a limosine load of strippers – frankly I’m afraid to ask. Still, Jack and teddy do throw the most happening parties, so perhaps I shouldn’t question, and just go with the flow. 🙂

Pagers

One of the dubious features of being a doctor are our pagers.

When you’re a med student you can’t wait to get one.

After having one for anything longer than a week you spend significant amounts of your time alternately cursing it’s existance and thinking whether you could get away with flushing it (or smashing it, or burning it, or…).

One thing can be said about them though: They do provide some interesting insight into how some hospital staff view doctors.

Firstly you get paged all the time about quite ridiculous things (“The patient has a slightly low temperature, but feels fine, and feels warm when I touch them”, or “Can you come and finish filling out this paperwork” – “I’ve already done it” – “No you haven’t” – “Yes I have, here it is” – “Oh, sorry”).

Then you arrive at work in the morning or on monday (I leave my pager in my locker when I leave work) to find that people have paged me at 5:30pm. And 9:30 pm. And 2:00am. And on sunday when I’m not on call. And on public holidays when I’m not rostered on. I can never decide if they honestly think I live at the hospital, or if they’re just being hopeful (and they’re probably lucky I don’t take my pager home, because the best they could hope for was to be yelled at down the phone for waking me up at 2 in the morning).

It seems when I read what I have just written that I sound like a nasty grumpy bastard, but I have found recently that I have very little patience for people who waste my (now quite limitied) time, and you come to appreciate that a little bit of common sense goes an awfully long way, especially many of the people you deal with seem to fail to use any at all.

Joining the lads

I had my interview for surgical training, and although it probably didn’t go as badly as I currently feel that it did (if you must ask, ask me in a day or two when I’ve had time for some introspection and a few more glasses of whiskey), I did make something of an uncomfortable realisation while I sat in the waiting room: almost all the other applicants that I knew from medical school fell into what I would have called the “Lad” category. They were the guys who played rugby, drank beer, and in many instances if you didn’t know better you would suspect of dragging their knuckles on the ground.

Now the reason I find this disconcerting is that I wonder whether I fall into that category, only I just don’t realise it myself. Is that how other people view me? If they don’t see me that way now, will they begin to view me that way simply by guilt of association?

It’s all a little unnerving really.

Surgical update

Oh, and I have recieved confirmation that I will have an interview for the Basic Surgical Training Program early next week.

More news as it comes to hand.

The dice are cast

Yesterday I put my application for the surgical training program in the post off to Melbourne.

It’s something of a relief to have it done and posted, but still daunting because I’ve done everything I cancontrol, and the rest is now all in the hands of the gods (or at least theÂ administrators for the College of surgeons).

I have to wait until mid july for an interview and then the interminable wait to hear whether my application has been successful begins.

What can I say? If you see me walking funny for the next month it will be because I’m crossing my fingers, toes, legs and anything else I can think ofÂ to superstitiously aid my application.

The sun… It burns!!

Today I started my Medicine rotation.

Now as you will all be well aware, I have about as much love of internal medicine as I do for being locked in a tank full of scorpions while having my eyes poked out with forks.

Ever since I lost 8 weeks of my life to my Medicine rotation during medical school, where I didn’t feel I was actively taught anything, was left with the distinct feeling that my consultant personally disliked me, and was almost failed* (a fact unrelated to the consultant’s dislike of me) I have disliked medicine. Other people find it intellectually fascinating, but I can’t help feel that the interesting academic side of medicine has relatively little relationship to the depressing reality of the clinical work (but that’s probably just my surgeon mentality coming out).
So by and large I have not been looking forward to having to do 10 weeks of medicine as part of my internship, but so far I haven’t found it that bad.

Because the physicians generally don’t work as long hours as the surgeons do (and it’s probably best if you dont ask my opinion of why that may be) , I am finally finding myself with time to do the other things I have been meaning to do now that finance isn’t such a constraint, such as going to the optometrist, getting my car cleaned and serviced, and getting medical and dental checkups (I don’t even want to think about how long it has been since I last went to the dentist for something non-urgent).

I am also discovering something about the world that I had forgotten about. When I leave the hospital in the afternoon there is this big yellow think in the sky. I can’t recall what it is called, but it feels pleasant and warm. I know I must have seen it somewhere before, but I can’t put my finger on where, or how long ago…

*Two of the three patient’s I was asked to examine had conditions I had never seen before, and had not recieved any teaching on during my medical term. In my mind the exam hardly fulfilled the stated assment aim of gauging my understanding of diagnosis and management of common medical conditions. I still assert that the main reason that they passed me in the end was that it would just be too much hassle for them to go through the paperwork to actually fail me. While ultimately my other terms (GP, ED) proved that my diagnostic and management abilities were actually not that bad.