Pastures new

Oh, starting anew was so much fun! I love love love my new job. People are friendly, not one person has sworn at me so far and it’s been three weeks! This is so civilised!

Joking aside, everyone is really friendly and supportive and I am settling in well I think. I like that there is a daily routine, but no day is quite the same – different patients with different problems, different challenges, different homes to visit, meetings to go to and things to learn. But then sometimes there are the same patients – I can bring them back to my clinic! So even if they come in with a shopping list of things to talk about, we don’t have to do it all on one day – we can talk about a few issues and then they can come back later for the rest. Genius!

Meanwhile, I’m still having a hard time getting over the criticism from the last job – I’m finding that it’s still going round and round my head, and every time I read a word or watch a programme or hear anything to do with ‘criticism’ or ‘work ethic’ or anything vaguely related, it all keeps coming back. I guess it cut even deeper than I thought. I seriously don’t mind constructive criticism if I can learn from it, but this was just criticism, nothing constructive about it, only destructive. Anyway I’m trying to listen to my head and my husband on this one, rather than my own very overactive conscience!

In other news, the family have descended for Christmas – it’s really nice to see them but sometimes a little intense! I have foolishly offered to cook Christmas dinner, so hopefully nobody will die of food poisoning…

Have a Merry Christmas and a restful holiday!

Critical care (or lack thereof)

I’ve just finished the first four months of my second training year, and, I have to say, it could have been better! I’ve found this job nigh on impossible – it was stressful, fast-paced and quite badly supported, with criticism for almost everything. If you know what to do with a patient, you are criticised for not doing it fast enough. If you don’t know what to do and ask about it, you are criticised for asking too much. Safe to say I was not good at this job, and it didn’t sit well with a few people. Surely it’s fair that some people are good at this stuff, and some thrive elsewhere?

Anyway, I had my final appraisal yesterday, and while most of the reports were good, one single feedback form was a full-on character assassination. Apparently, according to just this one person, I can’t do anything well, have a bad attitude and no work ethic, don’t function well in acute situations and cannot make clinical decisions. Man, that hurt. I know all criticism hurts, but I am particularly bad at taking it, and the thing that hurt most is that the person who wrote the comments has been perfectly nice to me for four whole months and not given any indication that they think I’m terrible. I would really like to have been told this stuff a little earlier on by this person, who is my senior and surely has a responsibility to help me learn, as a lot of these areas I could have worked on more. My overall supervisor had flagged up some issues about my confidence in decision-making skills at our mid-way review, but had told me that I was improving. Apparently not everyone shares this view.

So, after getting upset about it for AGES, how to deal with this pretty harsh evaluation? I know that all criticism is founded in truth in some way, and I freely admit that I am not the best in acute situations, I lack confidence in making fast clinical decisions, and I cannot run an arrest by myself (my Advanced Life Support course is this month, which will help). But the person ended their comments by saying that I should not choose General Practice as a career (which is what I was hoping to do) because I cannot make decisions. I thought this was a little out of line – it’s not really someone else’s place to comment on my career plans, and reading the review in another way, the fact that I am not good in acute situations and cannot run arrests probably makes me ideally suited to GP, where neither of these things happens. My one positive comment was that I am good with patients, again backing up that perhaps GP is the place to be. I’m not going to be a GP with only 16 months of medical experience, and I think the decision making will come with practice.

After reading some how-to-deal-with-criticism articles online, I came across some common themes. Firstly, criticism, no matter how harsh, will always hurt – it’s human nature to feel betrayed when someone who you thought liked you criticises you in this way. Secondly, it is important to strip away the manner in which the criticism is given and look at the truth behind it. Thirdly, use the truth to find something you can work on, either in your personality, your skills or your lifestyle. Finally (or perhaps this should be first?), know in your heart and in your life that God loves you, no matter what anyone says or does to you.

So yeah, yesterday I felt terrible, and this morning I still felt terrible, and I still have the occasional twinge of terrible-ness, but I’m getting over it, and starting to see how I can use the experience productively.

And tomorrow, I start anew.

Running scared

Today I did the thing I’ve been putting off because of The Fear – I agreed with a friend that I would sign up for a 5K in January. Eeek! The training is going so-so at the moment, I bought a baselayer which helps a lot – it’s nice not to be freezing when running – but I have a pesky blister on my right heel which appears by the end of each run/walk session. Bought some blister plasters today though so tomorrow I shall run pain-free!

Eating-wise, I didn’t do too well over the last couple of weeks – I worked ten days in a row, going from 7 day shifts straight onto 3 nights, which ruins the body clock and kind of messes up eating patterns too. I always had one proper healthy meal at home after/before work, but for the rest of the time I wasn’t that hungry for proper food and ate a lot of crap while working. However haven’t put on any weight despite the sheer volume of chocolate and am a mere 3lb away from a new stone bracket, so hopefully will get into that one before too long.

Better go and read more inspirational things so I don’t chicken out of my run when it’s cold and windy tomorrow!

War on poverty

Sorry it’s been ages, I always suck at writing regularly…

Work is very tough at the moment – the rota is bad, as I mentioned, but it’s more the responsibility. It’s a bit of a shock to go from being totally covered all the time to having to make decisions all by myself, which result in patients being discharged quite a lot of the time. I found it so stressful I got eczema, which I haven’t had since I was at school! Am starting to relax a bit, after being told by my educational supervisor that my ‘confidence wasn’t growing in the way they would hope compared with my performance’, which was quite reassuring (read: you haven’t killed anyone yet, quit stressing!). I’m told by my colleagues to just drink more alcohol, but I don’t think this is an ideal solution!

I feel like I’ve been working forever, haven’t had any time off for yonks, and although I get a few days in November I don’t think we’ll be able to go anywhere until next year – I finally get to choose my annual leave for my next post (General Practice, hurrah!) rather than have it allocated, so we are planning a break in March. I’m looking forward to it already!

Life in general is a bit tough at the moment – we are still a single income family, with Andy still having not found a job after doing all his IT exams, there’s just nothing out there. He’s applied to any job which pays money, IT or otherwise, so we are praying hard that something will come up soon. While I’m in this job we are ok, but when I move to GP (civilised hours, no weekends/nights/lates) I have to take a salary cut of around £700 for 4 months, which is going to be pretty tough – we are only just ok on what I make now. So that’s pretty stressful.

But actually, we are learning so much – how to budget better, how to tell what we need and what we just want, how to cut down on luxuries and enjoy a bowl of ice-cream and a night in front of Mock the Week on Youtube rather than a meal out and a trip to the cinema! We are appreciating that we have a home, and clothing, and food, and half of the world lacks at least one of these. And we have an awesome God who provides for us, so who are we to complain?!

I’m sad that we had to ditch our gym membership though, it was a luxury we can’t afford at the moment – I’ve taken up running, partly for weight loss and partly just for stress relief and fresh air, but the weather is totally foul at the moment and, shock of shocks, I’ve been on days this week which means I don’t get home until it’s dark, and I don’t fancy running in the dark when it’s chucking it down! Next week am back to nights, so will re-start my ‘couch to 5k’ plan then. A friend and I are planning to run a 5k next spring sometime (she’s run a marathon before, so she’s just waiting for me to be able to run for more than 5 minutes without dying before we can start training properly!) so that gives something non-weight-related to aim for. Really miss the lovely swimming pool though…

Meanwhile, my awesome husband has cooked dinner again, after I came back from work and just moaned about my crazy day, so I’m going to eat that and think about how lucky we are, to have God, to have each other, and to have enough money to survive even if foreign holidays are a bit off-the-menu at the moment!

Weekends off are rare…

…but awesome!

I have spent an afternoon with some friends from uni (which was great since we are all busy people and don’t see each other all that often), watched the Sex and the City Movie (umm, twice actually…well, it is AMAZING), been to church (working 11 weekends in 16 does not good church attendance make), ate a doughnut (oops), went for a walk in the increasingly autumnal sunshine (I love our area, I wish we could afford to buy here), and spent a lot of time vegging on the sofa with Andy, possibly my favourite activity!

Back to work tomorrow, I’m on lates and nights again this week, with nights over the weekend – read: all my patients will be drunk, what joy. I don’t actually mind lates too much, I miss rush hour, I get some daylight, I get to sleep in, and the late shifts are only 8 hours, what a doss! Seriously though, I do like this job, it’s very practical, and I’ve learned a lot of general doctor knowledge, like what to do about backache and sore ankles and wounds and stuff, as well as some resus situations and quite sick people.

But boy, am I looking forward to a blissful 4 months of general practice, where I do no nights and no weekends! I’m pretty nervous about it, GP’s a tough job – it’s all very well in A&E where you can do some tests and if they are all normal you can discharge the patient, but in general practice you have your eyes and your stethoscope and that’s it. Scary. But the routine will be lovely. And rumour has it there are afternoons off!

All for now. Have a good week.

x J

If at first you don’t succeed…

…create a new blog and start again!

So I thought I’d have another go at this blogging lark. My previous attempt can be found here, but I thought that life is so different now compared with last year that it was worth a change of scenery. You might notice that my header photo is the same…had to make it feel like home!

How is life different from before, you ask?

Well, Andy and I got married, for one thing – this makes for a lot of life changes! So now we are learning to live as one person instead of two, we are getting used to living together, and I am learning that Andy is an excellent housemate. He is very laid back, he never nags me to pick my clothes up off the bedroom floor, and he cooks dinner way more often than he should have to. He’s got great taste in music (although we had to come to an agreement about Buddy Rich, I am not a fan of Big Band), he’s got great taste in food, and for some reason he seems to love me a ridiculous amount, which is the best thing in the world to come home to.

I moved jobs again – I’m no longer in my first year as a doctor, which means I have reached the giddy heights of being fully GMC-registered and am no longer bottom of the food chain, which is nice. I am currently working in A&E in a district general hospital about 25 miles from home, which is a great job but terrible hours. (Another great thing about Andy is that he doesn’t mind when I come in from work at 5am and tell him all about my day!) I’m really enjoying this job, I love the variety and the fact that every day is totally different, but the shift patterns are almost unbearable (late shifts and nights 3 weeks out of 4, working 11 weekends in 16) so it makes leading a ‘normal life’ quite difficult.

While I was at uni I managed to put on rather a lot of weight, 4st above my ideal in fact, which is not very healthy and gets me down a lot. Consequently I decided in July that I would have a one-year goal of losing the excess and getting down to a more reasonable weight and BMI – after all, I’m supposed to be giving health advice to patients, and it would help if I practiced what I preached. Sadly I’ve not done terribly well since July, so I’ve adjusted my goal to October next year. Please note: this is a lifestyle change, not a diet! I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am never going to be someone who can eat cake and not put on weight, so I’ll need to change my junk-food-eating habits completely if I want to get healthy. I want to have a long and happy marriage, which is not going to happen if I die from fat-related illness by the age of 50. Diabetes scares the crap out of me. Also I find that I’ve been ill more since I started work than ever before (darn these patients and their germs), which is all the more reason to try to change some habits before winter comes and I succumb to a whole hospital full of germs! There now, my goal is out there for all to see, no backing down now…

So there are some reasons for the new blog. Enough for now, more soon (honest!).

x Jo