August 4 2012 reflections from MD PGY2

Aug 4^th 2012 – Today is the 4th day of my postings in a new unit in our medicine department as MD PGY2. We had comparatively lesser patients so there was not much work load, but then suddenly one of our faculty members called me to accompany another junior resident to see a patient in casualty which was a known patient of Mitral stenosis with regurgitation along with a prosthetic mitral valve now presented with atrial fibrillation and an episode of syncope.  

I found the ECG of the patient of to be of great interest as our faculty teacher told me that it had 2:1 block but when i saw the ECG to me it appeared to be just of 1^st degree heart block.  i took the ECG  along the patient to another faculty with a special interest in cardiology and she confirmed my impression that the ECG had 1^st degree heart block but she added that the patient also had intermittent 2:1 HB. 

I felt great wth the above and felt it was a very interesting learning experience. However i have a few grouses against the system that i thought i would share.Feeling tired now while writing all this, actually it was my night duty yesterday night. 

I feel it is foolish to expect a person working and rather running around the whole hospital with the same competency with which he walked into the hospital 32 hours before, and very inhuman to criticize, humiliate, scold, and discredit a person especially when s/he is working continuously since the past 24 hours without even taking a nap. It is extremely sad to find that residents after finishing such a grueling schedule have to again stand for consultant rounds and get a firing for them without another thought from them. Above all when we share our distress with seniors all we get is a consoling dialogue that this is a trend being carried on since ages... When someone greets me good morning on such mornings, i want to blurt out “what is so good about this morning?" :-(