internship, day 1

it's so bloody tiring. it's 1030 pm here, and i'm going to sleep.
i have to wake up at 5 (freaking) am to take public transport down the hospital which is all they way across the city, damnit.

internship is not hectic, for me at least. but it's so tiring because i'm still in the holiday mood. make that very much in the holiday mood! i kept nodding off today in the teaching session, and when the resident was giving us instructions.
what a way to make a good impression, huh.

i'm on the neuro stroke team, and our patients are located all over the hospitals, and there are so many many patients!!!! goodness me. the attendings lead the charge and it's like being on a surgical team all over again, they walk so fast, they write so fast, and they talk so fast! amazing. so much for medical rounds being relaxed affairs.

i haven't learnt much today except that there ARE reversible cause of dementia - to which my reaction was: is there such a thing? my attending promptly glared at me. NOT GOOD.

and i've done my first ever discharge summary! which took me a painstakingly slow hour. but my intern said it was not bad! :D so i'll be happy with small things :)

i'm not looking forward to tomorrow, least of all thurday, when i go on call for the first time. someone save me!!!!

i'm still really upset that my paeds elective has "poofed" into thin air. ARGH.

but a kind friend has offered to let me do an ortho elective with him so that's alright now! :D ortho is way more fun than paeds and it's important for exams too so that should be fine.

but what i don't get is:
WHY TELL US SO LATE!!!!

yes, this is a rant against the administration.
they jolly well knew that they were taking year 3s for that period in which we'd applied for electives so they'd be unable to handle us at that time as well.
and i'm sure they had all this planned long ago too.
so why tell us only now???

i'd already planned and settled all my elective slots, only to have it ruined by a cursory late announcement like that. why not tell us right from the start when announcing elective choices?

it irks me that students are taken so lightly. it's as if we don't matter at all, we're an afterthought.

they can't even be bothered to tell us properly, just a short email with 3 lines to it.
not even any apologies. and my elective supervisor didn't even know! good golly.

i know students aren't that important, but for goodness sakes, would it kill you to have released that announcement 3 months earlier or something once you knew?

it's not just me who's affected, it's a whole bunch of us.

it smacks of high-handedness and uppityness. don't look down on us please. we're humans too!

now i've to find something to do in that one week between surgery and ortho. ARGH.

(here's an explanation for jess!)
where i come from, we have an elective period of several months after completing most of our core curriculum at the end of year 4. so we get to do stuff we want to during this period, or we have to do remedial postings if we've done badly in any of our current postings - i'm scheduled for one boooo.
anyway, we have finals at the end of year 5, which is why the elective period is so important because it affords you: 1) the chance to brush on your weak subjects before heading into the "death" year, so to speak; and 2) the chance to do something you really like that you haven't gotten enough of in the core curriculum!

hope that explains it sufficiently! :D

and thanks a million xavi and jess!

my paeds elective just got cancelled! :(

and i have and ENT test tomorrow that i haven't studied for yet. :(

can my life get any worse?

pardon the melodrama but oh, i really did need that paeds elective to have a chance in hope of passing my finals, having done paeds so very very very long ago!

WOE. am most definitely NOT HAPPY.

all the love in the world for ENT isn't really helping right now. arghhh