Well, since it looks like I'm not going to be sleeping for a while...I'll try do some catching up.
It's been since December, and that's really hard to believe. I had just started my surgical rotation. So let me think... things that have happened since then.
I loved my surgical rotation, with a passion! It was a very different pace of life and structured very differently in terms of day to day responsiblities and duties. Two things really made this placement for me, first, the wonderful people I was working with. All the surgical teams were fantastically welcoming, friendly and supportive. I found it interesting and it made me really want to get stuck in, learn more and get the hands on experience, something which I felt they recognised and appreciated. My registrar, in particuar was fantastic and really encouraged me and helped me regain my confidence. He was very generous with his positive feedback, and at giving me support with things I felt shakey about. The strained working relationship I had had with my SHO on my previous job had really shattered my confidence and my self-esteem. But that definitely changed with surgery.
The second thing that I really got out of this placement was it cemented in my head what I want to do when I grow up. As a medical student, I always thought I didn't want to be a surgeon, and was really unsure about the idea of literally cutting people up! Which really conflicted with the fact that the area I found most interesting was obstetrics and gynaecology. And then I did my first placement, and I really enjoyed medicine and working, and found the variety quite interesting. I enjoyed doing the odd procedure. And I really started to think that acute medicine was perhaps the thing for me. And then I started surgery...
I found myself drawn more and more to those operating theatres. I would feel motivated to be super organised about my main duties, so I could rush to spend as much time as possible in theatres. At first, it was mainly observing, but man... is that draw is powerful. The overwhelming urge to experience it, hands on, even if just to hold retractors or hold the laprascopic camera. I would use every opportunity to scrub in and assist, frequently staying late to get the chance to go to theatres. And the more I did that, the more familiar the theatre staff and the surgeons became with me, and my reward was great! I was allowed (under very close supervision and guidance) to do small things, including making a couple of incisions (scary because after it's all done, the scar from that incision, is the one thing that stays with the patient as an external reminder) and closing the incisions, and various things like that. I found it all so very rewarding, and who'd have thought, I actually do have an inner surgeon, and in all honesty, it didn't take very much to wake it!
So I have decided, for definite, that I want to go into Obstetrics and Gynaecology. It interests me, there's a fair amount of variety and lots of opportunity for hands on practical procedures that I crave.
And that was surgery for me. If at the start of the year, you'd have asked me to predict which of my three jobs I would enjoy the most, I really wouldn't have picked surgery! And yet, by far it was. It may not have given me some of the challenges that that first job did, and I may not have learnt as much, but I will always view it as my most useful one, as it was the one that gave me my confidence back, I got so much pure enjoyment out of and helped me decide what I want to do with my life.
I'm now on my last job of the year, which is another medical job, and as someone pointed out to me, my last ever medical job! Which is very scary, and slightly sad thought. I do enjoy parts of medicine and wish that I could experience it more as I'm sure there's lots more I can gain from it. But unfortunately, the way that doctor's careers are structed these days, there's no scope for that, unless I decide to delay applying to O&G training posts and do non-training jobs.
I'm now on the cardiology ward, which in Yeovil has a particular flavour to it. We don't have the facilities for interventional cardiology, so we don't deal with some of the more traditional cardiology things. So there's some general medicine thrown in for good measure. It's probably the calmest medical ward in the hospital, which is a very big change from that first job, on the most notoriously busy and hectic ward in the hospital. And also, I've been working for nearly a year, so I am now more confident and experienced, and I think that also contributes to a much less stressful job. I enjoy it, but I think I'm not getting as much out of it as my two earlier jobs. But that's fine, I have a much nicer lifestyle now, and I'm very happy to settle for that!
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