Life and loathes of a new doctor: Putting it into perspective

It's the small, but infuriating and exasperating things in hospital medicine that really rip my knitting. Each day there are numerous obstacles and barriers put in the way of a house officer. They test and try us and push our coping strategies to the limit.

It's so annoying when the pharmacy telephones to insist that you rewrite an entire discharge prescription because you've written tablets instead of capsules. Or when the phlebotomist is unable to bleed a patient and you know they have veins like the Clyde Tunnel. It's so frustrating to get a message from the biochemistry lab that the really important sample you sent has hae­molysed.

I was convinced that the world was out to get me. I had finished a 12 hour receiving shift an hour and a half late, after one of the busiest most chaotic days of my life. I came out to find that someone had driven into the side of my car in the hospital car park and then driven off. It's soul destroying to work like a Trojan all month and still not actually have any more money than you did as a student due to your gargantuan student debt ­repayments. Why can't I get a hot meal at night? Why do consultants arrange admissions for 4:55 pm when you finish at 5 pm? Why is it my fault that the case notes/x ray/blood results are lost?

It's also the small things that make the difference, however. Like the grumpy, cantankerous old man who is rude to you and the nurses. He moans and complains and is generally uncooperative. But then one day he unexpectedly says, "Thank you," and you realise that he's just terrified of being in hospital. Or when you go to speak to the frail, young lady dying before her time from some hideous cancer. Her insides are rotting, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. She may well be dead by the end of the week, and she knows it. She asks to hold your hand just to make her feel alive. These small things put the trivial annoying things in perspective.