Girly Saturday

Had a great Saturday yesterday - felt like some kind of high-maintenance lady-who-lunches. One of my Christmas presents from mr me was a voucher for a back massage and facial at a hotel up in Headingley, and I finally managed to book it in for yesterday afternoon. It was amazing and really relieved a lot of tension in my jaw and shoulders and also now my skin is all soft and velvety, (although some spots coming now). Decided that it would also be good to get a much needed haircut the same afternoon, and spent the time in between in charity shops, where I purchased 2 handbags and a jacket for £8.50. The jacket is a rose pink velvet one and I got one black and white handbag and one brownish tweed kind of one. I came home very relaxed, with shiny straight hair and feeling quite pleased with myself. tee hee.

IMGs

It is a very bad time to be an IMG in Britain. For those who don't know what this means, an IMG is an international medical graduate - someone who took their medical degree outside the EU area. Life is chaotic enough for all junior doctors at the moment with the new system called MMC, where everybody is given their jobs through a centralised computer system and there is an entirely new system of training, as I briefly ranted about before here. I am one of the few to be immune from this intensely stressful process, as the people already on a GP training scheme are able to complete it without having to apply for anything else. Click on this link to see how it's affecting someone else in the system. So there is an immense amount of uncertainty around for most people, but it is much much worse if you graduated outside the UK and Europe. In March of last year, with scarcely any warning, the Department of Health announced that it was abolishing permit-free training for doctors from overseas. In effect this means that if an applicant for a post is from the UK or EEA, and is competent for that post, the post cannot be given to a doctor from overseas.


There are many reasons for this. Historically, 30% of UK doctors have been IMGs, they could train in this country without a work permit due to our need for their skills and the shortage of UK trained doctors. In recent years the number of UK graduates has risen and the number of doctors coming in from abroad has also risen due to the popularity of the UK for training and the access to the assessment exams to work in this country. This in addition to the reorganisation of jobs for MMC has led to a lot of competition for posts. While most people agree that it is important for all UK trained doctors to be able to get a job in this country, and that the GMC should stop encouraging IMGs to come to this country by continuing to conduct the PLAB (Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board) exams, it is the effect on those doctors already here that seems deeply unfair.


Doctors from other nations who come here first have to pass the PLAB exams (which are expensive), then frequently have to work in non-training approved posts to get experience to get to the final goal - jobs approved for training which can then lead on to registrar and even consultant posts if they are very successful. Many doctors have been here for several years, moving around different SHO (senior house officer) jobs, working away from their families (especially if they are married to another doctor), moving around, living in hospital accommodation, uprooting their families and working difficult shift systems. Suddenly many of them feel that it has all been for nothing, they will not be able to get onto training posts, and many will probably have to leave the country and try to start post-graduate training again elsewhere.


I am pretty aware of these issues at the moment, as I am the only UK graduate working as an SHO in this psychiatry department at my current hospital. The other SHOs are all IMGs and they all have a very high level of stress at the moment. Some have been shortlisted for interviews, some have not. Most have spent at least some time on the internet in recent weeks looking at jobs in Australia. One is currently in Australia checking things out there. Others are chasing round gathering information for their interviews, trying to second-guess what the interview process will be like. Several have been ill. A young Pakistani doctor who was working in the UK, and involved in the legal challenge from BAPIO to the DoH's decision has recently commited suicide. It all makes me feel very guilty, both that my job is so safe because I am British and to be part of a country that would do this to people who have been helping to provide a service to our NHS for many years.

A Friend

Having moaned excessively here about having difficulty making proper friends at work due to all the moving around different jobs, I have now managed to make a friend after 9 days in my new job, and I feel that she will be a good one. She's the only other female SHO, she grew up in India, she is married with a little daughter, but lives apart from her husband during the week, so is effectively a single parent doing a full-time medical job in terms of her workload. Somehow we seemed to like each other straight away - kind of had to, being the only 2 girls, but today it well and truly leapfrogged the colleague-friend barrier due to a discussion about faith. I won't go into our whole discussion here, as it was a private one. Briefly, she is a Muslim, but with a lot of interest in Christianity and we found lots of things in common to talk about. Also chatted about recipes and skincare (which overlap each other a lot more in Indian culture than in ours - think I would like to try the crushed almonds and milk face treatment) and other girly issues. Am invited to go to her house soon and meet her daughter etc. Feel hugely encouraged about this - I know I sound a bit pathetic being so excited to make a friend, but it did feel special. Maybe partly because it wasn't some diffident British affair where we both gradually come to understand we are friends by little gestures and invitations and understandings. She just came right out and said she was happy to have met me and she has been praying for someone at work to talk to about her faith. After my general whining previously about friendships not ever going beyond the end of the six-month job, I propose to make sure that this one is different.

Middle aged Saturday

I am now officially old. Here is how I have spent my Saturday. I got up when mr me left to play football, spent the morning going food shopping, taking my bottles to the recycling bin and doing the washing. Then I had lunch while reading the paper. I spent the afternoon setting up my new compost bin and filling it with alternate layers of rotting apples from the bottom of the garden (where they fell from the tree in autumn) and paper from the shredder and then generally tidying up the garden. Then I got in and sat down with a cup of tea and a crossword, then called my parents, then got the washing in and had a conversation over the garden fence with my next-door neighbour about the weather, his chest and the garden. I have no plans for Saturday night except that maybe the bathroom needs cleaning!

I am maybe not quite as sad as this sounds. I did have plans last night (meal out with mr me for belated Valentine's day) and do have plans tomorrow night (friend's birthday), but I do feel a bit old and boring nowadays because owing your own house just seems to swallow your weekends, whether it's doing the garden, DIY or just trying to vaguely get on top of the housework. People keep telling me I should get a cleaner, and maybe they are right, but it just seems so appallingly middle class. However, the real proof that I am getting old is that I quite enjoyed the day- just pottering round on my own getting things sorted. I do like being out in the garden. I should just stop fighting it and give in to being middle aged.

(My garden, but taken in the autumn before I'd done much to it.)

Being a wife

On Sunday at church, one of my friends asked me whether I would be interested in a Bible study course for some married girls in the church about marriage and how we are all getting on with it. She asked me to bring the benefit of my experience, as I will be the longest married in the group. (It will be our 5th wedding anniversary this year.) Probably sounds like a bit of a cheesy idea, but I think it's a good idea to reasess these things from time to time and look at the foundations of a good marriage over again with some supportive friends. I agreed that I would like to be involved, but just thinking about it has set me off wondering how good I am at being a wife. The best book I read about marriage on our wedding preparation course was "The Mystery of Marriage" by Mike Mason. Bit highbrow, but a lot of interesting and good stuff about learning to put another person before yourself etc - can't remember all the details now - should probably buy the book and read it again. Just started thinking that I spend so much of the time at the moment being tired and a bit needy that I probably don't very often put mr me's needs first. Not helped by the fact that he is normally fairly undemanding himself. But surely I could be more creative in making him feel loved and special. To be completely honest, I normally spend more of the time thinking and daydreaming about what he might do for me, what he has and hasn't done recently to show me he loves me, rather than considering what his needs might be. We are both good at some stuff in marriage - we always have a date night once a week, we don't argue much and mostly in a non-destructive way, we are good at regular hugs and stuff. Think that this group will be good and helpful, but how much of a good example I am as a wife... I'm not sure at all.

talking for a living

Psychiatry so far is a little bit like falling into thick treacle. Have had to slow my brain right down so it doesn't particularly expect me to be doing something all the time. As I had been warned it is a completely different pace of life. But maybe it needs to be so you have time to process and deal with the volume of heartbreak or craziness that can come out of just one patient when you ask them everything about their life, which is pretty much what you have to do to take a psychiatric history. I know craziness is not a very politically correct word to use and I'm sure that sometime soon I will be saying "this person is suffering from paranoid delusions with a formal thought disorder due to drug-induced psychosis" with the best of them, but just now my immediate gut reaction seems to be "wow, this person is really mad". Think I will enjoy it, certain I will enjoy having more time for my life outside of work. I can even do my on-calls from home! Hoorah for being able to sleep in my own bed with mr me and just going in if I'm needed!

Has been wintry weather this week - snowed yesterday and there's a severe weather warning out again tonight, which has meant that me and my sister have cancelled plans to drive down and see my grandad in Hertfordshire this weekend. Maybe not strictly necessary, but I think he would have worried a lot about our journey. Much more so than if one of our husbands was driving us, I suspect. But then Grandpa is 89, so I suppose I may overlook his old-fashioned attitudes and not mind. Especially as mr me tends to be a much more confident driver than me, so I suppose he is right in a way. Anyway, we will rearrange to go down and see him soon. Will be nice to have a weekend with no active plans. Mr me had got used to the idea of having a weekend on his own, so perhaps I will go round to my sisters' and watch TV and drink wine...

rhinovirus

Well, I had a horrible cold over the weekend. Was feeling quite proud of myself for making it though the winter so far without one, especially considering I have been working in general practice, with a minimum of 3 people per day trying to persuade me that they need antibiotics for their cold. Came down with it suddenly and badly though, spending the first half of the weekend in agony with sinus pain and unable to sleep, and the second half sounding like Nina Simone, but not in a good way. Recovered rapidly just in time for work Monday - doh!

Felt guilty about being ill because this was the weekend we hired a floor sander to create a lovely wooden floor in our back bedroom, and meant that mr me (as he shall henceforth be known) ended up doing all the work. He thought the machine was too heavy for me anyway really, so I sat around helplessly mopping my nose and stuffing decongestants down my throat while he manfully pushed power tools around in his safety googles and ear protection. Didn't quite manage to get the edges done though, so some hands and knees work with some sandpaper and a block may be in order. (by me - I'm not going to make him do that, seeing as the whole affair was my idea).

Had also booked to go and see Sleeping Beauty by the St Petersburg ballet at the Alhambra in Bradford with my sister, and couldn't really cancel having paid for tickets, so I went, and probably deeply annoyed the people next to me with my explosive nose-blowing. Enjoyed the ballet, but was probably a bit more detatched than I would normally have been.

Left work today - took in some cakes and fruit to say thank you and presents for my trainer. Everybody was very nice saying goodbye to me and I deeply enjoyed throwing away large quantities of useless memos and drug company promotions, but was sad to leave. and found the whole thing a bit tiring. So there is an update on my not-very-exciting life.