Monday, February 12, 2007

Medical Students

These apprentices are let loose on the hospital wards in their senior years to learn the practical applications of what they learned in the ‘pre-clinical’ years.

As a hard-pressed junior doctor, it is a good idea to try to get these gullible souls to perform as many of the menial tasks as possible with the promise that you will put in a word with their examiners for them. You will never meet their examiners but they don’t know this so use their paranoia to your advantage.

Patients can’t fail to miss them as they walk sheepishly around the wards usually in support groups of not less than six for mutual support. If a patient has anything about their case even remotely interesting, they would be well advised to keep it to themselves. If word gets out of something like a ‘classic heart murmur’ there will be queues of students at their bedside with stethoscopes at the ready.

They are easily recognized by their still trendy haircuts and off-white coats that look as if they have been in a boil wash for a week. The student diet consists mainly of water and hospital toast which gives them a pale consumptive look which is designed to make the examiners feel sorry for them.

Students are always laden down with books with titles that start with ‘Lecture Notes in…’ or large unsavoury albums such as ‘A Pictorial Atlas of the Lower Intestine’ which they usually save to read next to some unsuspecting little old lady on the bus.

House Officers

These are doctors within their first year of qualifying. They are qualified but unregistered, and occupy a sort of no-man’s land in the medical world.

House Wallahs, as they are affectionately known, swing constantly between triumph and despair, depending on the day’s events. They will be expected to be responsible and show initiative, but must ‘instinctively’ know when they should ask for advice and assistance. At the beginning of the job, if they are in any doubt as to what is an unacceptable hour to call on consultant advice, a phone call at about 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning to his home usually sorts the matter out.

As relatively inexperienced doctors, it is time that is the main enemy of house officers. There are not enough hours in the day to get all their tasks done and they may often be seen stalking around the wards in the middle of the night doing things that were forgotten earlier. It is not unheard of for patients to be woken in the middle of the night by the house officers to ask them, “Would you like anything to help you to sleep?”

If house officers are called to the ward during the night, look at the way they are dressed. They usually resemble somebody who has grabbed anything wearable to come out of a burning building. For day wear, the required attire is a stiff new white coat, a stethoscope worn proudly but nonchalantly around the neck and pockets stuffed with enough paraphernalia and reference books to supply a third world medical mission.

They invariably bring up the rear of the medical staff ward round, laboriously pushing a trolley full of case notes, looking like some ice-cream vendor and are usually, for the time being anyway, about as well informed.

Posted by Adila :: 2:43 PM :: 0 comments

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