Trials and Tribulations of a House Officer

Or an intern as the case may be :)

If you're thinking of becoming a doctor, think again.

And again.

Then smack your head and think it over again.

It's not as easy as it looks on television.

Just the other day I had my own sadly demotivated cousin ( have lotsa future MDs all in the family ) threatening to leave housemanship after one short week. Pity the poor fella!

Frankly it's not the first time I've heard of it. Fresh, dewy, enthusiastic houseman who walk into wards filled to the brim with stressed-up doctors, angry nurses and neverending piles of work usually find themselves freaked out with culture shock. It happens. Don't expect a welcome sign. Being immediately drafted for work, most of us get acclimatized fast enough, screw up our courage and usually soldier on - but quite a few just turn tail and run for the hills. The attrition rate amongst junior doctors can be quite shocking.

But why?


We all have different ways to react to stress!
Don't they know how bad it is? Don't they read House of God ( scathing satiricial treatise on the nightmares of internship! ) anymore? I'll be the first to admit that the conditions for internship are actually improving. And it will get better. Seriously. The poor interns currently struggling under horrific conditions might roll their eyes in disbelief but it's true! It was much, much worse before. Way back when.

Things you can expect as a house officer :

1) Trust me, you will be treated like shit. I would love to say that the specialists and MOs are wonderful - and yes, there are plenty of sweet friendly folk around - but by and large, freakishly short-tempered, egoistic monsters with big sticks abound. In the horrifying hierarchy of medicine, you are barely an amoeba. Expect to be squashed.

2) Expect endless caseloads dumped at your doorstep right on the very first day. Everyone's waiting for fresh meat. And they know you are coming. Work is already waiting for you.

3) Never expect to have regular mealtimes. That is like ancient history. Don't depend on the bell to be rung for dinnertime. Anything can happen in the wards - and farewell to dinner. Eat when and if you can, carry snacks in the wide pockets of your whitecoat and try your best to swallow the bland plastic food they serve in the hospital. Reason why most of us have gastric ulcers btw.

4) Social life? Don't even think about it. The hours are grueling. From now on, you live, eat and breathe the hospital. However you may socialize for brief seconds in the pantry over rotten food with the other tortured housemen.

5) Impossibly you are supposed to recall each and every detail of each and every patient in the ward. Think almost 50 in the bigger wards. Talk about an uphill task when patients come in and out through a revolving door. No particular advice here but I used to hurriedly scribble Cliff's Notes of the patients ( hence my hideous teeny-tiny handwriting ) onto lil pieces of notesheets to hide in my pockets.

6) Nurses can be mean to the newbies. Whether you bite back or shrink away, deal with it. Respect has to be earned after all. Think of it as a rite of passage.

7) Worse of all, you can complain but you'll probably get a dozen sneers. Crying babies who crawl home to their mommies and daddies ( usually the scions of Datuks ) to write letters of complaint are usually looked down upon - and the slanderous gossip spreads like wildfire on the medical grapevine. We all know who whines. Unfortunately the milk of human kindness is only reserved for the infirm. Weakness isn't tolerated amongst the ranks so whiny wimps generally wash out fast in the surprisingly macho medical line.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? So if you can't hack it, please leave. Now. Why suffer through the terrible agonies of the job?

Of course it's not as awful as I painted it. But I went into the job with just such an image of the horrible working life - and it actually turned out to be much better than I imagined! Most hopeful young doctors probably stagger under that initial adjustment phase since they don't anticipate the horrors coming their way. I figure it's easier to be prepared for the worst!