The future...

Well the next 12 months of my life have now been set in stone and my social life will now have to accomodate the ordinances of the Zoo.

So what lies in store for Dr J next year? Fun filled medicine in the wards he once trod and loved?

Not really.

Term 1 - ED

That's right kids Dr J your favourite fun loving doc is back for round 2 in the ER. Usually people like to take a break from the banality of chest pain and PV bleeders but not J. He's overdosing on the excitement in the ED just becasue he can (well, actually is forced to). So whilst he graduates into being a 'resident', a flood of eager but paralysingly slow interns will be forging their way through the waiting room list and begging him for advice on stuff he himself has no idea about.

Term 2 - Relief

Contrary to the sound of the name, this term is NOT a relief...it is usually an excuse for JMO management to banish you back to ED under the excuse of "to help out the new overseas doctors" People generally take time off on terms they dont like.. and so you end up filling in for jobs that no one wants and do a whole lot of scut work.

Term 3 - Paediatrics

Time to do something I enjoy for once! Yes, that's right about 10 years ago (man I'm old) I decided I wanted to be a paediatrician and help sick kiddies. 10 years later it's still quite an appealing job. No grumpy old people and their non-English speaking families; just a whole lot of litigous over anxious parents with snotty kids. Thankfully the cafe in paediatric section makes up for the bad food elsewhere in the hospital.

Term 4 - Geriatric Rehab

They're incontinent of urine and faeces, they can't tell you what's wrong and no they're not babies.
Most people become suicidal when receiving a geriatric term. 10 weeks of crumbly old people who never get better. I was advised strongly by my GP trainers to do a geri's term to help me in the future. I despised working the geri overtimes though this year and so very cleverly (gold star to me) snuck into a geris rehab term where most of their acute medical problems are sorted out and they are just getting some 'body-building" (read: physiotherapy) prior to going home so they can have another fall and die within 12 months*

Term 5 - ICU

The one thing I have never done in med school (thanks to some clever wagging) was Intensive care. Thsoe people with bazillions of tubes stuck into every orifice just didn't appeal to me. No patient's awake to talk to, no happy discharges home and no happy relatives. And yet somehow I got lumped with a whole term of this with 12 hour/day 7 day/week work (on a rotating basis). I just dread the thought of advanced physiology/pharmacology. Thankfully I've got 2 weeks of annual leave then to break the suicidality I might be experiencing.

And so this is what 2007 will look like for me. Not much fun by the sounds of it.

But along with this comes a sad realisation. I have no more surgical terms. Due to intern requirements and SRMO's BST needs, I will never again don the scrubs. I will never scrub in to assist again. My last operation was my total colectomy at 3am in the morning. I'm kinda sad about that. I, who was once a hater of all things surgical am now lamenting the oppurtunity to wear those blues.

Soon it'll be time to end the "Intern Experiment" and start the "Resident Experiment"...

* statistically once you break that femoral neck you generally have less than 12 months to live.