A Repost

Been too busy these past few days checking our junior interns' paperworks. I was quite upset hearing that these interns dont take their work seriously. One even challenged me that she's not afraid of extensions after commenting to her senior intern that she'll take whatever extension that will be given to her. Goodness! I have been in her place once and never did i complain about my work. So here's a repost from my other blog. For our junior interns who i know are currently in their most "self-pity mode."

MAKING HEAVEN OUT OF HELL...For our junior interns

Clerkship...all of us doctors have gone through this one "hell" year. Actually, some consultants or even residents like me would not even dare go back to this experience even if they're paid a million bucks. Who would? You're like a walking monitoring machine going up and down, to and fro a 3-building complex taking the vital signs of your patients, draining their urine bags, dressing their wounds, name it, we have experienced everything. You're really literally a "clerk". Writing the histories of your patients, extracting every vital information you needed for their diagnosis, taking note of their progress...hell, how many rims of bond papers and boxes of ballpens did we consume back then? If people appreciate my talent in expressing myself through this blog, i guess i owe everything to my medical training...these callouses i've got in my fingers always remind me how tedious and difficult it was to write histories and progress notes and therapeutic indices...if only i could view the gyri in my brain produced by writing these stuffs.

I am aware how my junior interns are whining and complaining about their current status. How they feel starved after skipping meals...feel tired after a 24-hour duty...down and disappointed when reprimanded by their seniors and consultants...feel inadequate when given extensions for a work they think they've worked hard enough...fall asleep in looooong lectures that their brains couldnt even process the data overload. What else should i add? Everything that challenges the mind, the ego and the body? A clerk really have to experience such. All good doctors have to go through the pains of clerkship.

I believe that going through clerkship is just a breeze if someone has the right attitude for it. Seriously, i didnt care much about my toxicity. Yep! I was branded as a toxic clerk eversince...now that i am a resident, I still am..aargh! I enjoyed walking through the empty corridors of the hospital in the early morning while watching for the sun to rise even if i literally would drag my tired feet just to cross one building to another to monitor my patients. I felt gratified seeing patients at the ER or at the wards treating them as my own even if i was still in training. I was a neurotic, a masochist to be exact, when i was a clerk...sort of died with myself, deprived myself of some things that would hinder me in my training (lovelife included...ehehe). That was just for a year. A year wouldnt count much for the 24 years that i lived life. I didnt have regrets in the end. I simply enjoyed everyday of my 12-month training. Success was sweeter after i went through the difficulties of training.

To our junior interns, keep on going. Hang on. The long agony will soon be over. Remember that a diamond is once a coal that went through the pains of fire. Just as the good doctors we admired ...the doctors we look upon to become like one...we all have to go through fire. Believe me...nothing is harder, more painful, more difficult but more rewarding than passing through the world of "training" - clerkship to residency. Put your heart in it the way you loved your "first." Focus your mind in it the way you never did. One year of clerkship or junior internship is never your whole life but it will determine the doctor that you will become all your life.

If I were paid a million bucks to go through clerkship again? I'll take your millions and go back in "heaven". Now that my hair is dry...lying in my bed would be more heavenly as of this time.