In The Beginning

In The Beginning there was a word and the word was MTAS and MTAS said upon to the world 'I shall give thee 5 questions and thou must write me some answers so fluffy that thine computer dost look like a sheep'. Then MTAS gave each of the 30 foundations schools a ring of power that corrupted their minds until one by one the deaneries fell into darkness. Finally MTAS took a random number generator and using that sent each final year medical student in the country a mark out of 100, the higher the mark the more likely one was to get a place somewhere worthwhile. And so it was that the F1s of 2011 were born.

(That's right I just began a sentence with the word 'and'. Do you know why? Because I'm a freakin DOCTOR, bitch. )

The Result:

*queue A team music* DUUUN DUN DUN DUN (bom clack) DUN DUN DUUUUN. D'lA DA DUN DUN, BAAA BA BA BAA (clack clack).

Day 1:

6am waking up in the morning, gotta be fresh gotta go downstairs. Gotta have a bowl gonna have cereal, seeing everything the time is going ticking on and on everyone's Russian gotta go down to the Bus. Stop.

It's Monday, Monday gotta get down on Monday. Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday.

(In this performance the part of 'The bus stop' will be played by Ben Grey's car)

5 whole months of holiday, can give you SUCH A CRICK IN THE NECK, and so I think I speak for everyone when I say we were all pretty excited to actually start at work. Certainly our GMC registrations were all set up to kick in and by this time I had even got 'Dr' put on my bank card because, friends, I am THAT GANGSTA.

Predictably, then, given our raring enthusiasm, clean aseptic ironed shirts and large disney-esque bambi eyes looking up blearily at the shiny hospital, we spent the entire day far FAR away from any real (or indeed unreal/gnarly or bodacious) patients doing super-boring stuff in the education centre

8am: Intro Talk
Highlight - Intro talk from moustachioed 1985 style grand dictator of all medicine telling us just how easy it is to be THROWN OUT OF MEDICINE FOREVER for seemingly innocuous things (like using fewer instead of less).
Lowlight - New 48hour sure LiterallyMeltYourPitsOff deodorant had failed by 8:04. Wet patches spreading worryingly.

9am: Computer Training
Highlight - Requesting a CT scan for 'Clinically low ionising radiation levels'
Lowlight - Explain to my why computer training is invariably done by someone who has only just discovered computing and is desperate to convey miraculous computing ideas such as 'and if you click on the SORT button... come on now everyone click it... has everyone clicked it yet? ok good. Now you've clicked the SORT button you'll notice that the patients are listed alphabetically'

10am: Still in Computer Training: Pits are now setting of tsunami warning signals in Costa Brava.

11am: How are we STILL in computer training

12am: Aseptic Non Touch Technique Training
Highlight - Getting my handwashing certificate
Lowlight - 'You know when we told you you didn't have to do this if you did it during med school. We LIED'

1pm-1.05pm: Lunch/Contract Pickup/Parking Permit/ID Badge/Pension Brief/How Not To Kill Patients Session

1.05pm-2pm: Extra Non-Compulsary Manditory Computer Training

2pm-3pm: Fire Safety

New F1s looking anxiously at the puddles of water exuding from beneath my arms. A girl screams, another points and cries 'please won't SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN'.

Fire safety lecture quite interesting. Turns out that putting water in a chip-pan fire really does BLOW YOUR JUNK THE HELL OFF.

Fire safety officer suggests use of Geoff's underarms to douse flames in case of fire-extinguisher malfunction/as an NHS cost saving measure.

4pm: Finish/Did we mention that we will throw you the hell out of medicine for any reason we chose just so long as it isn't actually a GOOD reason. Thats right Geoff, I'm talking about your BO.

4.05pm: Driving home made difficult due to stink waves emanating from new and expensive shirt.

Day 2:

Shadowing our old F1s on the ward. There are 2 patients. There are 11 doctors. Number of lives saved: 0.

Day 3:

It's just the F1s in the whole hospital, all senior staff are either being inducted or are being the inductioners.

07:45 Fear sets in. What will happen? What if a patient bursts spontaneously into flames on my ward? What if I prescribe someone poison instead of poisson?

08:00 Oh there's an F2 SHO covering us for the day...
09:00 Business meeting, introduced to my consultant. My consultant sends me off to buy coffee which I agree to do in an ingenious 'I buy you coffee you sign off my ePortfolio' manoeuvre.
09:05 Consultant refuses to sign off my portfolio.
10:00 Return to ward to find all jobs done by super efficient SHO.
10:05 Bored
11:05 Still bored
11:35 Spent last 5 minutes calculating how much we earned in those last 5 minutes. It was £1.15.
12:05 Free Lunch. Am annoyed as this is the second free lunch in two days. 'Oh Geoff' you cry, or don't cos this blog is long as shit and you'll have given up by now 'You just love to complain'. True. But I (and by that I mean Sam) had spent alot on ham for my sandwiches this week and for WHAT!
15:00 ST2 (thats 4 years senior to me) demands an emergency Costa Coffee to regroup and plan how to spent the next 2 hours.
16:00 Still in Costa
16:45 Actually admitted a patient onto the ward and prescribed them real drugs and real fluids and real EVERYTHING. Lives Saved: 1. Lives Taken Away By Jesus: 0.
17:00 Sent home by super efficient SHO despite her being on two phones, typing something rapidly into the computer, cannulating a patient with her toes and writing up a drug chart with her FACE.

Day 4:

See Day 3. Only there were another 6 doctors around.

13:05 my bleep goes off for the first time in history. (Compare to Trust Me, I Whinge Alot where his bleep is apparently unable to stop bleeping. It has bleepitis. It is count bleepula. If it were a bell it'd be going ding dong ding dong ding bleep bleep bleep). It is Matt. The pizza is in the mess.

(events have been changed for dramatisation, bleep was actually bleeped by me to check it worked, communication from Matt came by text message only).

16:00 Produce bad-ass discharge summary that recommends to GP that patient should probably have her inhaled corticosteroids reviewed as she is suffering from repeated bouts of sore throats. Explained this to patient at level appropriate for her understanding and produced documentation that I had done so.

That's right. I went there.

17:00 Pub. Family Guy-esque colleague drinks an inappropriate amount of beer before driving home. Eyebrows are raised. Giant Red Fitness To Practice button in Head Of All Medicine's office grows warm.

Day 5:

Training at QMC. Am tired now, it has been a strenuous week. I have aged considerably.

13:45 We spray Xyclocaine into each others noses in some kind of faux-80s investment banker stylee.
13:46 Mmmm Bananay
14:00 I insert my hot, throbbing, wet, flexible endoscope into someones nose. It causes them to cry.
14:05 She takes her revenge. Chalk up another of my orifices on the 'violated by endoscope' board.

Day 6:

That's right. There's a day 6. (FML, as the kidz say)

The Pam's leaving party the previous night has taken it's toll. I should know that at 27 I can't be staying up till 11pm without some serious repercussions.

The day is a blur. Largely because I forgot my glasses. Free Pizza Hut is given out. My pancreas sighs a weary sigh.

Spent the afternoon at Pam's Open House (It's an Open, do doo do, House). It was really quite upsetting.

Am now cripplingly alone. Again. Am considering moving out into a box to preempt the predictable departure of Sam to Canada or Aspley or wherever he's going this time. Taking comfort in the fact that the last guy who left me forever (Dave 'The Nuge' Nugent) is having a terrible time in Truro.

[EDIT: Text from Dave. He's having an amazing time in Truro and doesn't even remember who I am. He only texted me on the off chance that I could deliver pizza to their awesome 'Boards & Babes' party];

Tune in next week for more Trust Me, I Might Have Actually Done Some Medicine By Then.

The semicolon is deliberate.
This blog was sponsored (IN NO WAY) by
Rebecca Black - Friday
The A Team - A Team Theme
Guys 'n' Dolls - If I Were A Bell
The Commodores - Brick House