Time flies
Do
you ever feel that your lifes been put on fast forward? I
finished my first clinical firm last week. About half way through it,
our consultant turned to us mid-round and said,
“Youll be house officers soon, wont that be
fun.” Even allowing for some creative accounting—I like to
keep repeating to myself that it will be at least two years and nine
months—in principle, he was right. I have spent more than half my
life vaguely wanting to become a doctor at some unspecified point in
the future—around the same time that Id have to start
thinking about having children, paying tax, and buying things like
curtains and lawn mowers. Somehow the “later” has become
“really quite soon,” and things like my consultants
throw away comment come as quite a
shock.
Another thing thats
going to take some getting used to is the change in how we learn
things. The past two years were spent learning at a relaxed leisurely
pace—two hours of work, two and a half hours for lunch, home in
time for childrens afternoon television. Instead of learning
about metabolic pathways, the synthesis of fat soluble vitamins, and
the many types of collagen, we now have lectures containing phrases
like “When youre alone in the emergency department at
2am.” This is a particularly favoured topic of
conversation among the people who teach us; you can almost see them
reliving their particular 2 am crises right there in the lecture
theatre.
On the plus side, a bit of
fear and humiliation help you to remember things like nothing else. Not
knowing the answer on a ward round in front of five doctors, three
other students, the sixth former on work experience and being at a loss
as to whether to tick true, false, or dont know on your multiple
choice exam paper are worlds apart. Likewise, remembering which
combination of drugs will give your patient asystole is much easier
than remembering the correct order of Krebs cycle. At least
thats how it seems now, but maybe when Im alone in the
emergency department at 2 am it will be a different matter.
Marianne Mason, third year medical student, St Georges Hospital Medical School, London
Email: ms004688@sghms.ac.uk
studentBMJ 2002;10:397-440 November ISSN 0966-6494
