day zero, nearly

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life

Well, at least as much as every new day is anyway. Today I drove up the M6 to move into hospital accommodation outside of a hospital near Manchester. I have a small and uninspiring room with a shared kitchen and bathroom, all of which are decorated mostly with police warnings about the high incidence of crime in the area. It’s not quite luxurious, but it is cheap, clean, comfortable and convenient for now.

Tomorrow I turn up to my hospital for a final few days of lectures and hanging around on the ward to prepare me for Wednesday 5^th August, my first proper day as a junior doctor. I’m glad of this apparently gradual introduction to actual work. It seems quite manageable, but despite this I can’t quite shake a fairly powerful sense of dread. Part of this is the feeling I get daily when reading about Jeremy Hunt’s nefarious schemes and the government’s absolute refusal to address the concerns of many, but I’m sure I’ll rant about all of that it here at some point. 

I’m suspicious of change at the best of times so a large part of my dread is from a bit of underlying stress in starting a new job in a new city. Most immediately unsettling however is the fact that the annual new doctor changeover day “Black Wednesday” is associated with a 6% increase in patient mortality. We are fairly closely supervised by seniors to begin with so things aren't supposed to go far wrong, but even so when new doctors joke about trying not to get ill in August, we're actually deadly serious.

But despite all of this I really am looking forward to the challenge, dread and all. I chose medicine for a reason and it’s taken an inefficient length of education to get here so I am very eager to finally do some (hopefully meaningful and useful) work contribute a little to something important.

Helping people, doing good, saving lives, changing the world, etc etc etc. It’s not easy being a hero you know. (Really I’m just looking forward to my first proper pay packet.)

Cape day

Yesterday, Wednesday July 15^th, was an important day because I wore a hat and costume and shook hands with another man wearing a costume in a hall of other people wearing costumes, and I also got a piece of paper with my name on it. Turns out wearing a baggy gown over my suit was a good idea as it hid (to some extent) my extreme sweatiness in the beautiful sunshine. Despite this many people seemed to want to take my photograph a lot, and there was an awful lot of clapping, smiling, handshakes and sweaty hugs. I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable such a strange series of events turned out to be.

Gryffindor

In the hall those of us receiving our MBChB stood up and recited the GMC’s “duties of a doctor”, a modern-day Hippocratic Oath of sorts. I was reminded that there’s a fair bit of responsibility in my chosen job. I think that it’s quite a good creed, so worth reinforcing by typing it out here:

I promise to:
- Make the care of my patient my first concern, providing a good standard of practice and care
- Keep my professional knowledge and skills up to date and recognise and work within the limits of my competence

I promise to:
- Take prompt action if I think that patient safety, dignity or comfort is compromised, and protect and promote the health of patients and the public

I promise to:
- Treat patients as individuals and respect their dignity, treat them politely and considerately and respect their right to confidentiality

I promise to:
- Work in partnership with patients, listening and responding to their concerns and preferences

- Give patients the information they want or need in a way they can understand
- Respect patients’ right to reach decisions with me about their treatment and care

- Support patients in caring for themselves, to improve and maintain their health

I promise to:

- Work with colleagues in ways that best serve patients’ interests
- Be honest and open and act with integrity
- Never discriminate unfairly against patients or colleagues
- Never abuse my patients’ trust in me or the public’s trust in the profession

I know that I am personally accountable for my professional practice
I must always be prepared to justify my decisions and actions

ex-med-student

Since passing my finals I've received four or five emails addressing me as Dr.

All of them are junk e-mails but I still get a small warm zap of egoism each time. And although I haven't yet seen any patients or participated in the hat ceremony my identity as medical student is steadily and undeniably drifting away from me.

The most significant manifestation is the expiration of my student card which runs out at the end of the month. I am deeply saddened at the prospect of paying actual money to acquire that daily shameful extra cheeseburger from the McDonalds down the road from the hospital.

This all means that my rubbish unoriginal blog title and url need updating too. "medstudentwords" was boring but descriptive but now its not even accurate. So, until I outgrow it or change it, the new title for my home on the digital will be "juniorblogtor".   I am aware that this is an extremely poor title, but my alternatives were even worse:

cyberjonny
technolojonny
drblog
procrastimedicine
bowelsoftheweb
juniordoctorwords
crashcall
blogtoroctopus
drblogtopus
droctoblog
weak-foundations
diarrhoeaideas
jonnyology
blogacetamolqds

sheesh.