Thursday 31 May 2007

Drained

I am sitting in my clinic room, having just finished seeing my last patient of the day, and feeling emotionally exhausted and unable to focus on anything at all, so thought I would have a little moan on here before attempting to do my dictation. In fact maybe I will do my dictation tomorrow, as I don't feel up to it really. This is really just a self indulgent grumble, so if that is annoying to you, stop reading now. I've just had a day of difficult patients. I saw my most difficult patient on the ward today, and she just fills me with such anger and guilt by a mystical process psychotherapists like to call "countertransference". By coincidence, I was presenting her case as my presentation to all the other doctors at the lunchtime meeting. I was doing this without the support of my team, who are all away this week, and I felt a bit insecure doing the presentation, as I was the person with least experience in psychiatry. Got some useful input from the other doctors though. Clinic this afternoon over-ran, I had several very distressed patients, one patient turned up stoned, and halfway through I seemed to lose my power of decision making and my ability to listen. Most of the time psychiatry seems like a bit of a holiday because we really don't spend as much time seeing patients as any other speciality, but I think that's necessary, because when you do, it's just so tiring... Think I need to go spend some time gardening. That always straightens me out.

Thursday 17 May 2007

Green and pleasant land?

Working with mostly non-English colleagues for the last 3 months has given me lots of opportunities to look at things from other points of view. The chat in the junior doctors' room ranges from ways to control the world population, to where is best to go on holiday, to council tax and religion. What has struck me most I think is getting a glimpse of what it's like to live in England as a foreigner. This came across particularly forcefully a couple of weeks ago when I went to a barbeque at a colleague's house, and was the only British person there. I had a fun time and people were friendly and chatted to me, but what came across from almost everyone I spoke to was how difficult they found it to live in England. Almost all made some reference, either implicitly or explicitly, to the discrimination they face in getting a job. This is particularly an issue for doctors at the moment. People see this country as a difficult place to survive and a very hard place to get ahead. People have said in my prescence recently, all of these things... "you have to be disciplined to work here", "you have to pay for everything here, everything is taxed", "some are more equal than others", "I have to prove my worth twice as much as an English graduate" etc. A lot of internationals also seem to find it difficult to see the classes of society who see benefits as a way of life. I suppose if you come from a country where the poor starve on the streets to a country where you have to prove your worth at every turn, and then see people living for free, it is difficult.

Certainly all this has made me think a lot more about the country that we live in. Why do our media cover human interest stories obsessively for days? Why do we have to pay a licence fee and a fee on almost everything else that happens on a piece of paper? Why do we pride ourselves on being an inclusive society, when the BNP got 11% of the vote in my local council elections? Why do we enable people who have no desire to work to live in a comfortable house with enough money to run a car as long as they have enough children? Some of these thoughts are not comfortable to me. I admit to normally being a woolly liberal when it comes to benefits, and a little islander when it comes to thinking the British way of doing things must be the best. Of course there are great things about our country and things we should be very proud of. Corruption is minimal compared to a lot of countries, we have freedom of speech and religion and a lot of history behind us. I just hope we don't lose the freedoms and traditions that we have. The thing that struck me most at the barbeque was when a young Nigerian man said to me "The reason that this country is losing its power and greatness is that it has turned its back on faith, which was the source of its strength."

Saturday 5 May 2007

Sleepover!!!

So I can't seem to think of anything intelligent to blog recently - think my brain has been eaten by facebook, which I have recently become dangerously addicted to. (it's great - I've got back in touch with loads of people I'd lost contact with!) I thought I would write a quick post to share my joy in the simple pleasures of the sleepover.

Actually it was more of a girly night in the end than a sleepover, as only one person ended up actually staying, but I think the fact of calling it a sleepover made for a better girly night. we consumed excessive quantities of pizza, chocolate and wine and lemon drizzle cake with strawberries. We chatted, did facemasks with cucumber, did our nails, straightened our hair, listened to the Bridget Jones soundtrack, played a game to see whether anybody could turn round in the bottom of a sleeping bag (no-one could), watched "How to lose a guy in 10 days", giggled and talked about boys until about 3am (or me and the remaining friend did). Also, I love girls - out of the blue, three practical problems that I had chatted to different ones of them about had been sorted for me! How great is that? Unfortunately now I have to go and do the washing up...