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.