My Story - PART I

Lately, in my circle, an explosion of she-say, he-say occurs. 

Before I delve deeper into this issue and tell my part of the story, insignificant as it is, let me tell you the story of who I am, in the whole scheme of things.

I am no one. I am not famous, I did not make any significant huge contribution to any part of our society other than I am alive, working, functional and a consumer. I am whom you can say, partially vocal, partially reticent, like any other persons. I share my views for fun. I rarely divulge anything that is related to my privacy other than my hobbies and observations and some parts of my random travels and daily life. I am no celebrity, in the easiest terms.

I am a doctor.

My circle mainly consists of my small group of good friends, family and colleagues and friends from my life journey (from high school to various housemates from my years from living apart from my family to my friends I found at college, universities and work). So, my friends are mostly those who work in the health industry. 

My job is not my whole story. It does not define me as a whole, it is something I do every day and as I have said in my previous stories, my job and I have a love-hate relationship. Some days I am glad I am doing what I am doing, some days are just meh, and some are so torturous that I always feel like quitting and walking away. Now, why do I stay? This is the part of My Story.

I am just an ordinary doctor. I do not create miracles, my knowledge is shallow, as shallow as a puddle as compared to the information available in the medical world and I am competent enough to do what I do to be really honest. Now, since I already admit this, I am pretty sure people, the general populous will claim, 'Ah another idiot who is not fit to be a doctor.' 

If a doctor is not humble and thinks she/he is a God's gift, or God forbid, akin to God Himself, then I laugh at that idea. No one is perfect and everyone has their mistakes and weaknesses. I hope I myself realize my weakness and daily, while I work, I rely heavily on other people (my patients, especially my patients, my seniors Medical Officers at work, my specialists, my staff nurses and even my good housemen). I rely on them to remind me of what I am lacking, what I need to improve on and what I need to learn.

So my story starts like this.

Everyone is talking about housemen issues and our dirty medical world these days.

So many scandals, bullying and overall negative environment to work in. Generally, the whole population who is not directly involved in the medical circle has vague idea of our work and how stress is related to it.

But what they do not know it, this whole medical world is trapped in a vicious cycle.

All the stresses leads to mistakes leads to harm leads to more stress leads to bullying as an outlet to let go of your frustrations and exhaustion leads to more stress and the whole cycle goes round and round. What I always say is we are dealing with humans and human lives. Humans who are essentially different from each other and respond differently to treatments from each other. Humans who come from different backgrounds with different circumstances.

It is almost unique and unlike any other jobs in this whole wide world. Now, I am not saying our job is extra special, extra stressful than others and we are extra special snowflakes. No. What I am saying is no one else other than us truly understand how stressful our work is.

Try imagining this (I can only tell from my OWN experiences and perspective, I DO NOT represent the WHOLE WIDE WORLD'S MEDICAL SOCIETY):

Housemen (as I know it):

• Wake up at 4-5am, starting work at 5am to 7am, depending on our shift/rotation/how many other housemen available (but hey if you have less than 10 for the whole department at that time, tough luck). Waking up when the sun do not shine, I always say.

• End work after the sun sets, usually earliest at 5pm, latest 12am to 1am (I have seen some went back at 2-3am, poor souls). If you are lucky and your department is cool enough to have a shorter shift (approved by the department depending on again, the number of people working), you will have an AM shift, the one that ends at 5pm if, God willing, you finished your job on time and can escape after that immediately.

• Now, some say, what is so bad about that. Mind you, we do not have the usual office work with usual office break. No. We work on our feet almost all the time, seeing patients, attending collapsing patients, taking patient's blood, doing procedures, doing paperwork like putting patient's information in our clerking/progress sheet, death certificates, discharge summaries, MC, labeling blood and samples, sending blood and samples, collecting blood result, writing memos and referrals to various departments, hospitals and other related field, consulting patient and explaining patient's current conditions to patients and families, conveying to families regarding patients death or impending death, attending calls, assisting in OTs, referring to various teams and hospitals, clinics to attend to, presentations, courses and CMEs (like training class if you will). I can list a lot more. All simultaneously.

• If you are lucky and you are easily adapting, you will work fast. If your team is excellent, everyone will pull their weight and chip in. If you are the other end of spectrum who learns slower, not easily adapting and have a shitty team, then your luck is out. Shitty team is a team of people who avoids work by going to TONNES of courses, who kiss ass to their superiors making you the coolie with no glory, leaders who make shitty schedules, putting you at worst rotations and wards, putting themselves and their close friends in best rotations and wards and giving themselves glorious short shifts and offs, and those who love to 'mengular' or 'snaking' (not to be confused with 'snacking' as in eating snacks) in which these are the persons who will disappear like magic right after the rounds are concluded.

There is no middle ground.

• If you are indeed lucky, you are 'Jonah'. I am not sure where this term originates from and if it is used widely all over the world, but it is special.

Jonah = So unlucky (depending on how you see it), that your admissions will be sky high, issues will pop out every 5 minutes and your patients need resuscitation every few seconds. And someone will always die on your watch.

• Then, depending on your rotation, you  may need to work night shifts, or general population like to call it oncall, at least once a week. Now, it doesn't sound bad other than if you are unlucky enough, you are alone to man 1-4 wards. Did I say, alone? While you would have another 2-6 team mates but they have their own wards and work to do. Night shift is usually a double shift, in my case last time, usually starts officially (officially does not mean we can come at 8am, we have to come as early as 5-7am usually) at 8am, a break at 12pm to 7-8pm, then re-start work at 7-8pm until 12pm the next day with the day (work) continuing at 7-8pm again to the next day at 12pm. Now, again it sounds reasonable and fair, but usually it means no sleep and lots of work. And, not all shifts easily ends at 12pm, some dragged on due to unfinished issues and work which has to be finished before you go home.

That is just the nature of the job itself. 

• Now we are adding the drama factors. We have malignant people in our jobs. Malignant means people who are so bad, they are actually bullies. They scream at you, hit you, throw stuff at you or around you, bully you in lots of ways from belittling you, calling you names and epithets, overall, they are there to make your life more miserable. Mind you, half or most of the time, all you can do is just take it and bear with it. We cannot even leave it. The explanation letters, the threats, the extension (which makes your life a living hell as you have to stay in that hellish rotation longer).

To be real honest, housemen are the lowest in the hospital totem pole.

• Then, the days of work you have to do. The usual is 6 out of 7 days with random off days in between. Some, are lucky with 1 and half a day off or 2 and half a day off. Maximum 8 days off per rotation (a rotation lasts minimum 4 months that can be extended, because of various reasons, to 1 year maximum), if you are, again lucky enough to have superiors who allow it and the number of people at work to take your shift once you are not around. Again, this job is not a job where the whole 'office' can take holidays. Everyone gets sick and someone has to work. Bad days is when there is not enough people, you are sick and you still have to work unless you are dying or bedbound. Everything else is not an acceptable reason enough to take leave. Or when there is, again, not enough people, you have to work 14 to 21 days STRAIGHT, with no off days AT ALL. We are not freelancers here, where we can work at our own convenience. We just have to work. As illegal as it sounds (I think it is illegal to work more than 6 days straight, but hey, I have worked 8-14 days straight with no offdays and that is just how it is).

• The exams. Ah, the exams. Viva and paper exams to offtag (the period when you are starting a new rotation when you have to learn enough to be deemed safe enough to work independently without tagging to a senior/MO and can be put into the night rotation), middle-of-rotation exam (some more than 1), on-the-spot pop quiz and questions, end-of-posting exams and viva. LOTS of examinations to pass a posting, to graduate, if you will, that indicates that you learned enough to survive and be safe enough to work in that rotation and to allow you to proceed to the next posting/rotation. 

Now, this should give a glimpse of how things work in housemanship. Mind you, housemenship is our internship, if you will, a time to train to be a fully functioning-enough medical officer later. But we are still FULL FLEDGE DOCTORS. Full fledge as in we DID graduate as doctors, not just medical students. We work like others, just that we are also learning along the way. It is not as if we are attending a real-time course as an observer only.  

I have seen some, I would call them rude and ignorant, people in social media calling out to housemen. As if we are the species you can look down because we are deemed not good enough to care for you, your family members and your loved ones. 

Hello, reality is in this government setting, housemen = in-house, they are almost the first ones who see you and attend to you (other than our dedicated nurses and medical assistants, a shoutout y'all!). Thus, looking down, talking down and talking bad about us will get you nowhere because no medical officers and specialists have time to personally do your blood work and put in your IV line aka branulla. Medical officers and specialists have their own roles in the whole scheme of things that does not include personally coming at 3am in the morning to take your blood (unless indicated, which is another story by itself).

My story in this whole scheme of things is not yet told. 

More coming up.

P/S: I am just post-call, and I have yet to sleep since more than 36 hours ago. I hope this post is coherent enough. The story will continue and I will edit this once I am a full human being later, not a zombie with a headache.