Taking Care of the "Kids"

3 interns, 2 seniors, 3 med students. All supposidely smart capable human beings...how did it come that I'm the leader in all of this. The doctor mask/role and the leader mask/role are similar but not mutually exclusive. In this millue I've found that although you may have what it takes to take care of patients, you may lack something that makes you good at taking care of other doctors. What I've had to deal with this senior month is an intern who is lazy and thinks she knows everything, a senior who I personally know to be lazy...but at least doesn't think she knows everything, and a student who knows pretty much nill (though she has had 3 years of school, so she is wayyyy behind). All through this it's been pretty much understood that they are all my responsibility. I'm to manage the other seniors shitty intern, I'm to keep the other senior from emotionally and mentally imploding, and I'm supposed to teach a medical school student what many other teachers have apparently failed at after 3 years of school. I don't relish the task I've had this last week and a half as I found out the state of the other group of doctors on my pediatric wards. Sure I don't "HAVE" to do it, but if I want the poison to stay away from the entire team, if I want the "rot" to leave the patients unaffected...here I am, being the person the other senior can't. In taking up the doctor role and now grasping this leader role even more I'm slowly convinced that it is filling me full of shit, the things that come out of my mouth to these people are things that my authority figures would say...I find myself agreeing with them and it's hard not to get addicted to it and let it change you. Just in becoming a doctor I've found my family/home life manners have suffered, I don't say "please/thank you" as much, "sorry" is something that is rare instead of the common as it was in my pre-doctor world. I promise you I'm being as nice as I can and trying to be as logical as I can to get the effect I'm trying to achieve, which is to keep the group together and make a medical school student a real doctor one day (not the psuedo-doctor other docs laugh/are scared of). That being said, I've had to be an administrator, a jerk. I've had to sit down and make a girl cry. I've had to tell someone that I expect better from them, without threatening, simply imply that I expect that certain changes be made to their personality in order to succeed. In short, I've had to dig into people in ways I find intrussive and slightly tyranical. When I've felt really bad I've told my wife and my attendings, asking them if what I said was appropriate...they've approved. That makes me feel better, that I'm not needlessly mentally torturing people, but deep down I feel like even if what I'm doing is "right" in the end...I'm seeing more and more what people mean by "the means justifying the end" that doing the "right" thing doesn't always mean you get to be the hero, that sometimes you have to worry about the "right" thing turning you into the "wrong" person. It's going to become more and more important to keep my personal life seperate from these masks that I wear, so one day I don't find I've driven away the people I love, with a fake personality that I suppose is my own. I hope what I'm doing is right. Newbie Leader

Big Boy

I don't know how so much went wrong in such little time, but it's put me in a me in a mild state of shock.  I'm on wards and my attending is a guy close to retirement. It's generally known in residency that working with him you are basically the attending, because he doesn't give a damn.  If his license goes then he retires...so he doesn't care.  For the last 3 days I've been attending, really.  It's been an eye opening experience, it's shown me that there are things that I can do that I didn't know I could and things that I still can't.  I'm not experienced enough to hold that responsibility and power without making mistakes and when I made those mistakes I stood in front of the other attending's and took my shalaking as a big boy.  I might be a boy in pull ups taking a punishment meant for an older person, but I made those decisions and I have to stand by them, no one else carried that responsibility, I did.

The last six hours of my day was yelling at me.  I'm having trouble processing what lead to things going that bad.  Considering my job it could have been worse, no one was hurt...they could have been.  What it comes down to is I convinced myself I knew what I really didn't and I did what I prided myself on not doing, I believed my own bullshit and didn't look up the right answer.  I tried to handle it on my own and I failed.  I couldn't even go home when I tried to, I couldn't even feel I was so tired and ground down...even without what happened it was a long day.

I contemplated getting drunk, but I have to pull a 6-9p shift in the same damn place.  I ducked out and went to a movie instead.   As I'm walking out of the movie I'm finally feeling better, digging out of the sludge, but just as I feel better another one of the things that happened today hits me again and I'm down in it.  I have a recipe for surviving days like this (I've had 3 total in my time at residency).  You put your head down and watch your feet place themselves one in front of the next.  You think about what mistakes you made, put something in place that keeps them from happening again and you move on and even if you think it's a lie you tell yourself tomorrow is going to be better.  Last step is to go to sleep, sometimes that's the hardest thing is sleeping with what you've done and what you have to wake up to.

Newbie Doc

Fire and Ice

So on April 29th we had our second son, Blake Wesley. Whoohoo!! This really reinforced for me how inadequate pediatricians are at dealing with children sometimes, little Blakey is the quietest cool of a child you've ever seen.  If I had to contrast him with my first son Brian he is white hot to Blake's chilled persona.  There is no instruction manual for little Brian, any pediatrics advice anyone has ever dealt seems to fail ridiculously with him...I was starting to wonder what it meant for me as a pediatrician if I couldn't raise my son in normal pediatrician fashion...as it turns out it means nothing.  Blake is the child all of my advice will work for, he is the as-advertised-model of the "boy".  Just goes to show you, that you are born with a temperament and personality, which along with your experiences shapes you into the person you're going to be.  It's amazing to me that both boys mimic their namesakes so perfectly (Kate and I's respective brothers, Brian and Wes).  Not that I'm hating on my first son, he has and will continue to be difficult to raise, but his temperament is going to push him into success...not that Blake can't have that to (his uncle is easy proof of that), but when I see Brian's personality its hard to imagine him doing anything that isn't in some shape or form exceptional. We are two very tired, very proud parents.

Newbie Dad