Well this isn't really the beginning. I'm a third year medic, this means I have two years of 'studying medicine' to my name but I am still four years away from qualifying and a lifetime away from competence. I can point at an MRI scan and nervously mutter about sub-arachnoid haemorrages, blithely point out strokes in the internal capsule, mutter about Small-Cell-Lung Cancer, reel out the symptoms of Cushings, happily diss the GP who has told an acquaintance they have Glandular Fever (I stoichly maintained they didn't) but am still less use than a minnow in the Sahara without a tail.
Unlike most contemporaries I have worked on a ward, not as a shadowy medical student, but as the lowest of the low, a Healthcare Assistant. I have seen the appalling way hospital staff treat their inferiors and the awe, dislike, fear and tolerance with which they are regarded. I have cleaned up poo, vomit and sick, tried to explain to someone's sixteen year old son that I can't give his 35 year old mother a sip of water that she is begging for so heart-wrenchingly, because she has had a stroke, and if her gag reflex has been lost then it could be inhaled and kill her. Then at the other side I've sat at a consultant's shoulder and watched him tell a man he will restore his sight. I sit and write essays about calcium regulation versus adipose regulation, how we maintain our Pa O2 on Mount Everest, whether the retina is wired for fine resolution or global illumination, and I've emptied someone's catheter bag.
Medicine is a world of extremes. The cleverest people (I am not referring to myself) do the dirtiest jobs, and the highs and lows are those of absolute humanity, life and death, sickness and health. No-one is immune. Doctors see patients at their lowest ebb and I am terrified that in a matter of half a decade I have to be contributing to decisions that affect someone's most primitive needs, someone that has outlived me already by maybe sixty seventy years and after 6 years of reading books I get the right to tell them what to do.
I have The Fear. But also the Excitement. Medical school is a happy bubble of saving lives and finding cures. HCA work is a miserable(ish) world of incontinence and disability. Somewhere there is a medium.
Meanwhile, while working as a clinic clerk I would like herby to promote Handwriting Ethics to all healthcare professionals. I cannot read your writing. Do you mean 12 weeks or 12 months? Do you mean 'refraction','referral' ,'reminder', 'renal' or 'renewal'? WRITE IN BLOCK CAPS. If I could take over the NHS for a day (optimistic) this would be one of my first implementations. Followed by slapping consultants that book patients into clincs in 3 weeks time when the consultant themself is actually in Dubai/Saudi Arabia/California/Milan (delete as appropriate) and has CANCELLED it. No I do not want to Overbook or ring Mr *Cole's nice secretary. I want you to write 4 weeks.
Also I am getting upset by the EWD's. And it won't even matter when I qualify. Argh.
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