My junior days are over, sort of...

I started off last year as a Foundation One (F1) doctor: eager, hungry for knowledge and – thanks to my University diet – a healthy 90kgs. Over the course of the year I have been worked ragged. I have lost 6kgs working evenings and weekends, on call from 8am to 9:30pm, as well as night shifts and staying late to complete ward jobs. Working an on-call shift means you are the first doctor alerted after 4pm on weekdays – and between 8.30am to 9.30pm on a weekend – for any ward work. This includes prescribing paracetamol for non-specific aches and pains, having empathetic converations with anxious patients and their relatives and running to emergencies such as cardiac arrests.

Throughout the year I have been the most-junior and least-knowledgeable doctor on the unit; the one trying his hardest to focus and maintain composure. Now, those days are over! I have passed the baton down; no longer am I the most insignificant team member. I am now a Foundation Two (F2) doctor , and I have an F1 who knows next to nothing. He is fresh out of medical school and completely green. Next to him I am no longer lacking in lustre, but shine brightly. This is looking to be a good year!

My first day as a doctor

Reminiscing...so finally I was here, a doctor at last and about to start my first official day of work. I could barely sleep all night for all the excitement. Five years of books, exams, new friends, and great experiences at medical school had brought me to this day. The first day of my two year foundation training which will be followed by specialist training in whichever field I'm fortunate enough to get into after the foundation training.

On that day I confidently strode through the doors into the teaching hospital, I had been a student here for five years, but now for the first time realised how large this hospital really is. Wide corridors, high ceilings, airy rooms, and everywhere people moving. Receptionists on the phones or directing people where to go, patients, doctors, porters, nurses all going about their relevant business. I felt like a country boy coming to the big city for the first time, vulnerable, inexperienced and junior. They did not warn me about this at induction.

Before I completely crumbled, I managed to find my way to the ward where I would be starting as a House Officer. The nurses immediately came to my rescue, giving me a ward tour and showering me with reassurance, I must have looked so vulnerable. I met my two Senior House Officers who looked at me with pity for being so green, and relief that they had since moved on from my stage of training.

I met my Registrar as well, 6ft 4in tall he towered over my respectable 5ft 9in frame. He had been qualified for eight years, as well as his medical degree he had a PhD, and had been published in numerous medical journals. Any thoughts that I would continue here as I had in medical school, as one of the brightest, completely evaporated as it dawned on me that next to the nurses and doctors, I was by far and way the dumbest person on the ward.