My Queen

The early bird catches the dole

My first two years of work are now finished- I’ve completed foundation training! I managed to get past my general incompetence, various hoop-jumping assessments and dramatic shit-storms in the middle of the night. I feel like I’ve progressed a fair amount as a doctor in this time, as is to be expected. I’ve tried to focus on my learning and tried to keep good principles in the back of my mind as I practise, and obviously I’m still an inexperienced junior doctor making mistakes but I’m happy with where I am clinically at this point in my career.

Thinking about the future, I’m leaning much more towards oncology as a future speciality. I’d thought about it during medical school although only had a fortnight of experience in the field. So,  I chose my foundation year rotation with the A&E/Oncology combo that I got during F2. And it proved to be something I really enjoyed, and something I seemed to be reasonably good at. The four months have given me good opportunities to not only increase my clinical experience in the area, but also to get a few whistles and/or bells to add to my CV. Nothing overly fantastic, but something to promote myself with in an interview.

As for the more immediate future, I’ve decided to take a move that doesn’t advance my career objectives: I’ve now joined the glorious ranks of the unemployed! The plan to go to China has been something running through my head for a couple of years now, and never quite come to fruition. So last Autumn when the decision of whether or not to apply for a job never year arrived, I decided to not even look at the Core Medicine application system. That way I wouldn’t panic-apply and end up not doing what I’ve been wanting to do. So until I head off in nine days time I’m enjoying being a lazy gobshite and doing sweet eff all!

Holidays don’t come easily in medicine, and with my last job (due to severe staff shortages) any time off came with a nagging feeling of guilt over leaving the rest of my colleagues to deal with the added stress that one-less-person-in-work resulted in. So now I’m taking this opportunity to relax, be happy, and enjoy the fact that for this brief period of my life I have much fewer things to worry about.

Instead, my focus is on What Happened To Barb and where in Belfast are the best locations to catch Pokémon. Jeremy Kyle and Jeremy Hunt can both kiss my ass- this is great.

M