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Author
The author is a paranoid, deranged and cynical misanthrope who records snippets of her life so that she will remember them when she grows old and withered. The identities of any names or initials on this blog are based on the assumptions of the reader unless otherwise specified, and the author claims no responsibility for them.
Reality
The author somehow got into medical school. Yes, you of the general public, shudder and fear the wrath of an inept doctor.
Loves
Reading, Maisy (my dog), tea, writing (albeit badly), piano, music, junk food.
Hates
Almost everything else besides the things mentioned above.
Friends
Bao Cheng' Bernice' Chien Young' Chun Hing' Claire' Faustina' Felicia' Ferly' Gloria' Irene' Irene & Jiaying' Jac' Jiamin' Jiasin' Jiaying' Lutheng' Karene' Marissa' Melesa' Mingyi' My fictionpress' Pamelia' Pei Rong' Qiu Ting' Rachel' Satires Site' Stasia' Sylvia' The Clique' Vinette' Wenjia' Xin Rong' Xue Ying' Yanne & I' Yanne & Jamie' Zeena' 203'
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Chat area
You know a rotation is honestly fking bad if you're determined to pass the year just so you'll never ever have to step into that hospital or rotation ever again.
In the short span of a year, I have encountered 2 such rotations.
Paeds is nothing short of a nightmare; it makes obs gyn seem like a fairytale. The shifts we are given are absolutely horrid (8am-5pm, 2-11pm, 10pm-2am), there's no parking, no common room except a dingy cramped space with 6 computers, lockers and common room area get locked up at 5pm despite the shifts we have to do, no accommodation so even if we finish at 2am and have to get there the next morning it's our problem to solve... All in all, just a logistical shitpile topped with the feeling that no one gives a shit about you despite how you're sacrificing your time, energy and money to provide free labour. They even made us pay $25 deposit for our ID card (non-personalised) and locker key.
It's almost like it isn't enough how us medical students are treated like something nasty stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. Oh, except this year of course, when we are helping the staff do what is essentially their job for no pay and no gratitude (eg: taking 12 hours worth of observations). One of my peers was surprised at how delighted the midwives were at having us students until she started her shifts.
We're given no respect at all. Zilch. No power, no authority, no rights. They dump a timetable on us and expect us to drop everything else that we're juggling, such as work, extra-curricular activities and social life (as if we even have that much in the first place). When I tried to swap out of my shifts because I have 6 2-11pm shifts and there's virtually no parking and it's dangerous/difficult to take public transport at 11pm, I wasn't able to. Despite explaining to the coordinator that I was taking public transport.
Fair enough that they can't accommodate everyone's needs. But at least provide some fking accommodation, even a dingy room with nothing but a couch (which was basically where most people slept for obs gyn. In the student common room on this couch that's probably older than me) because it's stupid to expect us to go home at 2am and back the next morning (9.30am for bedside tutes for me). By the time I get home and shower, 3am would be a pretty damn stingy estimate. And it'll take me 1hr15mins to get to the bloody hospital the next morning, which means I'll end up with around 4 hours of sleep and expected to function at top level.
Kiss my ass. Don't expect me to turn up for all my shifts, especially the Saturday ones. They don't even provide a fking fridge for us to store our food. Just looking at the costs if I have to buy food from the bloody hospital, it'll cost me easily >$10/day to just turn up. Excluding opportunity cost of working. And hell, I don't even earn that much a week.
It's absolutely ridiculous but what can we do about it? And yet when we graduate and start earning a decent paycheck, people go on about how doctors are overpaid and we are so goddamn lucky to have a stable and guaranteed income/job. Really? Try living my med school life and look me in the fking eye and say that again.
So over med school.
11:57 PM
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Today, another consultant taught me that life is unfair. Or maybe I need to change the definition of 'Terrific presentation' to 'average grades'.
Yes yes, let me wallow in my self-pity despite getting a reasonably good mark (25/30).
What really pisses me off is that we spent so much effort putting together a presentation that both entertains the audience and facilitates clinical reasoning/change to current guidelines. And in the end, we get worse marks than people putting chunky slides full of data that is not even visible from the other end of the room. And worse marks than people who virtually regurgitated study results and clumsily cut-and-pasted them on a slide.
Oh but of course, we had inappropriate pictures. Such as 'bitch' (which is apparently a swear word??? Really? I wouldn't have thought it would be in the same class as 'fuck'), and irrelevant pictures.
So despite actually coming up with enough evidence to convince more than 3/4 of our peers that our conclusion to change the recommendations was right, we got a worse mark than people regurgitating shit onto powerpoint slides.
Shoot me now.
It's frustrating. Are we meant to develop critical thinking, or just play the lottery of getting a lenient marker? Are the people who end up with prizes and honours just lucky instead of really smart? It's honestly bordering on ridiculous the amount of times this has happened to me, and each time with an independent person/multiple people (like today, where peers came up to us after the presentation and told us our presentation was awesome. And how people in the later groups tried to mimic us) saying I/we were treated harshly and unfairly.
Maybe I'm just missing something and it's just me. Either way, it doesn't take my annoyance away. I guess the solution to good grades is just student doctor-shopping to find the nicest marker where possible because even baboons hurling pieces of undistilled evidence at certain markers can get better grades than people who actually think through stuff and try to engage the audience.
Fuck this shit, bitches. Yes, 3 out of 4 words of that last phrase were swear words. Fuck the entire system. As if I give a shit anymore.
6:43 PM