The tortoise and the unicorn

So, that's it. My first term as an intern is done. I haven't blogged much since I started, and that's partly because I've been too busy, but in truth full time work has not been nearly as difficult an adjustment as I was concerned it would be. I had an accumulated day off last Tuesday, and simply having a day off on a weekday felt so unusual I decided that I must have adjusted already to working full-time.


I had a phone conversation with the intern coming up from Sydney to replace ...

Tags: internship, perspective, transitions

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Reflective

I stayed back late last night to get on top of jobs before the weekend. It's our team's turn to admit patients so the number we're responsible for is going to sky-rocket come Monday. Best to get on top of things. One of those jobs, an easy one I'd assigned low priority to, was writing a letter to a GP to inform him one of his patients had died. They had died before I started, I'd never met them, didn't even know I had to write the letter until the file appeared in my box. Still, because I'd never ...

Tags: death, internship, overtime

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Reflective

I really didn't expect to feel the way I'm feeling about being an intern. With the first week over and the realisation that it's actually going to be a very manageable job for the time being, I've started to let go of many of my insecurities and simply enjoy the realities of my job.

Today I gave my first lecture as a doctor to a good turn out of Griffith and Bond medical students and I thought it went really well. I had a terrific case study to use and even got a call from pathology ...

Updated 31-01-12 at 09:58 PM by Matt

Tags: academic appointment, internship, masters, university

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Reflective

A lot of doctors have these really impressive horror stories of their first patients or their first week on the job and how difficult they were. I’m not going to have one of those stories; my first week was fine, fun even. As a medical student you hate not being able to do much useful for your team but now as an intern you’re suddenly an integral part of it all and it’s nice. Really nice. I felt a little sorry for myself when I was student and had nothing to do but, as an intern, I feel much more ...

Updated 28-01-12 at 11:28 AM by Matt (typos)

Tags: internship

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Uncategorized

It kinda went pretty well?

I actually had a pretty good time today. Everything was fine. Rode my bike, made good time and was glad to be squeezing in the exercise (40km round trip too, good exercise). I got to the hospital on time, had to walk pretty much from one end to the other in my cycling lycra to get from the bike racks to the shower but that wasn't so bad (just felt a bit self-conscious). I knew the registrars were doing their orientation so I printed my list, checked the weekend ...