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The Waiting Medical Student
24 April 2008Waiting, that’s the first thing most medical students learn to do.
In the “early days”, when you’re the wide-eye medical student, constantly overwhelmed by what’s around you and afraid of over-stepping boundaries. You seem to lack initiative, but in actual fact, it’s just because you’re a little on the shy side. You don’t know whether it is alright to walk up to random patients and talk to them.
During these first couple of weeks, you walk into the ward or clinic 10 minutes early and let the relevant people know you’re there and that you’ve got a scheduled teaching session with Dr X. You’re pointed in the direction of the appropriate waiting area and are told that the said doctor should be around in a bit. At this point in time, you still have no idea whether anyone (be it Dr X or not) will make an appearance. Someone pops in and offers to bleep Dr X for you after 20 minutes but the idea of bleeping a consultant seems appalling, you thank him/her but politely declines. You’re aware that everyone’s busy and have patients to take care of. You are, in short, in the way and you’re lucky if someone has the time to teach you anything. You wait, usually for more than half an hour before anything happens. All the time, you’re thinking that this time could be better spent doing something more productive, be it reading a book, having tea with friends, taking a nap or clerking a patient. But uhm… you wait…
As time progresses on, you learn to expect this long wait. You bring something along with you to occupy yourself. You familiarise yourself with the doctors who will eventually appear and the ones who will most likely call in to say he/she is too busy to take you that day. You weigh your options and decide what’s worth waiting for.
And as you become a more senior medical student, things change. Teaching sessions seem to happen more frequently, you feel like less of a pest in the ward. You appear on the ward just on time and let the relevant people know that you’re here for Dr X and they offer to bleep him. You are delighted at the offer and thank them. Dr X is bleeped* and you’re told that he’s busy at the moment and will be there in 15 minutes. You learn to take this 15 minutes to talk to a patient you clerked the day before or to help to take blood, then you pop your head out just in time to see Dr X walk up the corridor. Perfect.
:)
*This depends on where you are and what type of consultant Dr X is. If he’s told you earlier in the day he’ll be there, you wouldn’t bleep him. If he is a scary old traditional type person, you wouldn’t bleep him either… and I suppose if he’s one of the conventional consultants and you’re in Malaysia, you wouldn’t dream of doing anything but wait patiently. heh.
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And in case you’re wondering, this is not a rant. I just have a very long break in between clinics today and I was asked “will you be alright? can you occupying yourself OK during this time?”
on April 25th, 2008 at 8:11 am
that’s where PDAs come in handy in terms of bejeweled, texttwist etc…
:p
on May 1st, 2008 at 10:09 pm
OTOH, I had medical student Y and Z sitting in my neck lump clinic this week. After seeing the first patient, I told them to follow him to the ultrasound room so that the radiologist can take them through the ultrasound features of neck lumps and come back to me to discuss the case. Guess what? I didn’t see medical student Y or Z since….. That morning I picked up 5 interesting cancers of various sorts, Y & Z just did not realise how much learning opportunity they have missed.
on May 1st, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Greenpasture, it takes all sorts to make up this world, doesn’t it?