Challenge me

I love challenges and my family will tell you that I obsess over them until they are sorted out. I'm not too familiar with the giving up policy... even though I may say it in frustration, I always pick it back up as my mind finds some new way to wrap around it.

Internship is a challenge! That is an understatement!! I hate internship and have been emotionally trudging through it although I have been wearing my game face. I tried to figure out what part of it I hated and at first I wasn't objectively able to separate the parts. But having been abused for the past 6/12, I have become sullen and have been having increased thoughts of drinking.

Why?

This weekend I was on duty (Yep Saturday 8am till Monday 4pm) and in the middle of a quick snooze at 3am I jumped out of sleep panicking that I had missed a call from one of the wards I was covering. Then it hit me.

It's not the fact that I am still learning and have to seek advice from seniors about unfamiliar cases or management situations. It's not the lack of sleep that accompanies being on duty. It's not even the number of times you are put on duty, taking you away from home.

What bothers me is the fact that they call me at anytime and often without any respect to order me around. Yes I can spite them by not responding or taking my sweet time but in the end the patient suffers and I won't do that! Everybody orders you around!! I HATE BEING ORDERED ABOUT!!!!!

Sometimes at work I have to walk around to find equipment to get the job done. I work with it. Sometimes you are railroaded by people's personal life as you try to get the job done. I work round it. Sometimes co-workers are not as helpful/considerate. I work in spite of it. But my blood boils every time I am ORDERED to do something.

I not looking any friends and I don't expect them to be sweeting me up. We all have our work to do. I don't think that I am lazy or a shirker of responsibilities. I know that often I am unconventional which I can and do receive flack for, but I get the work done and I put the patient first. I don't work at making life difficult for co-workers, but they just seem hell-bent on pissing me off!!!

Everything they call you for, in most disrespectful tones and often threateningly, you must hop, skip and jump to get it done right away. If you decide that another patient is more important at the time so you stop to sort that out, they call you back with threats and accuse you of all manner of things. At first I thought I was being paranoid. But as I speak to more interns (suffering in silence) I realise that it's a global phenom!!......at UHWI!

Apparently the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality is inherent in the UHWI structure/hierarchy. Ppl know this. Very few make efforts to change the culture.

I have 5/12 to go, now understanding my real challenge..... avoiding a personal small thermo-nuclear explosion...... before I rid myself of this rite-of-passage!!

Pray for me!!