ADOitis

Dragged myself out of bed on Friday morning cursing the admin stuffup that was seeing me work on my rostered day off and having to rearrange my errands to another time.

I felt particuarly seedy due to my persistant cold (which certain friends hate) and to make matters worse had to walk the half hour trek to work cos my car was being fixed.

My reg decided to rock up early and the other reg was in Dubbo doing a clinic so I had to cover her patients too. Then went straight to a Urology meeting before doing a professorial ard round with the big boss and then another consultant ward round.

By the time I finished all that it was 10:30 and I hadn't yet written in any of the notes (during the surgical rounds I prefer to wait till after the round to then go and write neatly in the notes so I can actually get time to write everything).

Now all I wanted after 31/2 hours of rounding was to just sit and quickly write in my patient's notes. But the nursing staff (and in particular the NUM) came flying at me demanding to know what was going on with each one of their patients.

1) If you WANT to know what's happening with your patients, why don't you show up when we do our round and find out for yourselves, rather than show up an hour late EVERY day and expcet me to tell you in a private one-on-one debrief.

2) If you aren't able to meet the above mentioned expectation, allow the poor intern time to compose his thoughts and sort his stuff out before harassing him and saying extremely dumb things like "Doctor, you seem a bit stressed today?" (to which I replied "Well it's my day off today, how do you THINK I feel?")

3) If you ask "Did Prof say Ms Blah can start self catheterising?" and I reply "Um I dont think he said anything about it today" plese don't stick in your little jab to insult me by saying "Well were you even ON the ward round?" cos this will only make me despise you even more.

I've realised that work can bring out the worst in me. I lose my patience very quickly and realise that I need to be gentle with the other staff even when they are extremely incompetent.

However, when suffering from ADOitis (as my reg so eloquently diagnosed me) I just lost the plot. Like not as in throwing hissy fits and running aorund waving my arms like a lunatic... but more like just skulking around the wards with a peeved look in my eye. Most of the nursing staff avoided me after they got the idea.

Thankfully ADOitis was cured with a 2/7 dose of Weekendamicin which resolved all symptoms and made the patient feel a lot better.

Weekendamicin was synergised by a steady infusion of Yum Cha today with my Asian buddies (followed by beers at the pub with the boys whilst the girls went shopping). Nothing like some unpronoucable food and chickens feet to lift one's mood (well maybe not the chicken feet).