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