Our mutual friend who is considering leaving is someone that is much better than me in every regard. She is charming, independent and more than capable on many levels by comparison. Iris read my work and posted a response that I'm sure some if not all of you have read. At the beginning, it felt as though the response was a form of attack. A criticism that mocked my opinion and in a sarcastic tone, dismissed my reflection as childish and primitive.
The reason I wrote what I thought down in this blog was because I thought that this was an appropriate place to do it, rather than actually confronting her directly. Like Iris said, she has encountered a couple of instances where people have actually been enraged about others leaving and that's my point exactly - I am not interested in telling this person my view because there are elements of her life, as I said before, that I am unaware of. She hasn't told me and I'm sure given the nature of the friendship, I will probably never find out.
The opinion Iris has put forward to me is that this mutual friend will be capable to do whatever she wants and will be productive toward the community in the career she chooses to follow. But I didn't want to hear it - it wasn't personal toward you, Iris, I just didn't want to hear that someone is capable of being brilliant at something other than Medicine & Surgery.
As surprised as I was accused of being perfect and my expectations of colleagues is beyond the sky, I would like to respond by acknowledging that I behave this way because I am not perfect and more importantly, because I barely am of any use outside of the Clinical world.
People around me having brilliant extra-curricular hobbies and skills that I have never been exposed to before. What are my hobbies? Working on weekends. Iris, you dance and have solid faith, you cook and read. I have friends who knit, play the piano, violin and enjoy activities like cycling and sport.
This year is the first year of my life where I have been exploring the potentials to have a hobby. Yes, I'm 25 years old and no, I have not had a legitimate hobby other than watching movies or playing computer games, neither of which I do very often and I do not consider them hobbies because they are solely sedentary activities that require no effort of any kind.
I decided to join the gym, read books and enjoy teaching.
Our mutual friend has many hobbies and is brilliant at many if not all of them. She is a lovely person, an amazingly smart cookie and I enjoyed her company every moment of every day last year, when we were close. But as time inevitably moved forward, we parted ways in different hospitals and as much as we attempted to keep in touch, it just didn't happen.
Clinical medicine is all I have and I believe that for me to be so protective of maintaining its sentiment to me is natural. I have barely any hobbies and the ones I do have, I am an amateur. So when I see people 'considering alternatives' it shocks me to bits because I don't have that option. I really don't.
The patient is so important to me - the concept, the idea of delivering a service to people is critical. This is how I was brought up and it is essentially my life choice. It's the only thing I have going for me and even then, I am barely passing.
Iris, I apologise if my views were distorted, condescending or rude.
Otherwise, I think it's silly of me to keep insisting.
It sounds like you've had a rough day, and I don't mean for my comment to contribute to that - I hadn't seen this post when I submitted it.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it might be more accurate to say that you don't understand why your friend feels the way she does, and perhaps that it's frustrating to you that she could consider walking away from something that's so important to you? I get that, because clinical med is really important to me, too. But I guess it might be good to take a step back and remember that everyone is different.
I do stand by my comment that we need to look after ourselves first, and I think it's particularly important for people like us, to whom the patient is so important, to remember that - because we're the ones at most risk of 'pushing through' until we burn out. I'm glad you were able to make the choice to take care of yourself today.
Also, I'm older than you, and also have no 'hobbies' - but that doesn't bother me. :)
It has been quite a rough day.
ReplyDeleteI did acknowledge in my first post that my view was limited and I didn't have the information capacity to make accurate judgement. So I was completely aware that this person didn't open up to me about her personal obstacles and of course, that is her right.
Yes, community tax dollars do not go directly to students or to our education, but you may understand that student expenditure by any academic and healthcare institute is significant. My point more so is that people, patients, go out of their way to see us and it is a privilege for us to see them. You mentioned that we won't see them if they were really unwell, but my response to that is when you do your Critical Care / Surgery term, you will participate in active resuscitation and cardiac arrest management as well as management in the Intensive Care Unit. So, we see patients with a spectrum of diseases and, sometimes, without their consent.
Accepting a position in this program, being educated until the end and graduating with MBBS only to do other work (and I'm not talking about research or anything related) would be perceived as criminal to some of the older folks.
As one of my personal mentors, who is a Staff Specialist, taught me: "This is a sacred agreement."
It may be just another job to some people. That depends on how seriously they take their work, how attached they are to their responsibilities and there is a spectrum of that everyone sees in hospital everyday among students and consultants.
Just something interesting for you that I plan to blog about soon: There is direct evidence correlating the concept of "safe working hours" and patient mortality. Increased frequency of staff turnover per day means decreased perceived clinical understanding, which increases the probability of missing diagnoses that colleagues from the previous shift did not emphasise. So although we must look after ourselves, it has been proven through some level of evidence to increase patient mortality.
Also, please remember that my posts are my thoughts - not Gospel. I found the first response to my previous post offensive, rude and outright humiliating.