The Transition from Medical Student to Doctor:
My Experience!
By: Zarnain Shah
If you ask me to describe 2018 in one word, I would say “unexpected.”
Like my colleagues, my role in patient care underwent a remarkable transition from a medical student to an intern. Looking back, it dawns on me that we survived and thrived well beyond our expectations!
This year was full of our firsts: the first ABG, the first lumbar puncture, the first tube thoracostomy, the first pager, the first call, the first CPR, the first death declaration and the list goes on. It was very thrilling in the beginning.
However, with each passing day, this year also unfolded that there’s much, much more we young doctors didn’t know yet – even after struggling years in medical school. Realizing this was frustrating! The fear of making mistakes kept us from sleeping on a good number of calls. The ‘A-ha’ moments in our training were far outnumbered by the dreadful moments of crippling doubt. If you had a good work ethic, your resident’s “you did a great job” got you through the day. Your consultant’s “you’ll excel in whatever subspecialty you choose” helped you through weeks. And most importantly, five to ten minutes-long venting to your genuine friends got you through your rotation with a terrible senior.
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But you must wonder what motivates a young doctor to show up day after day, week after week, to the same old building with colorless and depressing interiors, medicinal smells, surrounded by rooms full of sick people left, right and center, to work on an average of 70-80 hours per week. Was it the money that we got at the end of every month, the so-called image of being lifesavers, or was it something else? What was it? Although I am not sure about others, for me, I discovered that the only true motivation for a doctor to go on and pull through when every day is more exhausting than the last, could only be found in the ones who are compelled to push themselves against uninvited, untimely events of their fate: the patients and their stories.
People drop their masks before landing in a hospital and doctors get to see their fellow humans in a very vulnerable and raw state. When doctors are asked to push themselves beyond what’s considered the normal human limit, they need the ones who remind them the point and purpose of all this stretch. That purpose could be found only in their patients. The patients might have a broken body but in a multitude of ways, their lives resonate with ours. The only thing a doctor needs to do is listen and look deep enough.
Like many other young doctors, I spent this year away from my own family and made my hospital, my home. In the hierarchy of doctors, I comprised the bottom, but I was also among the ones closest to the patients. To many others, I might have missed out on a lot – grand concerts, magnificent parties, and what not. But I think, I had the opportunity to be exposed to the real realities of life – all through my patients.
Learning those life lessons was possible only when I listened to my patients and looked at them as full-fledged individuals, not simply as constellations of symptoms. Only when I looked at them beyond the raised JVPs, the blue sclera, the pan-systolic murmurs, the low potassium levels, and the ill-defined lumps.
Only when I looked deep enough, did I realize that even the girl in the VIP room of the private ward didn’t have an ideal set of parents. I got to meet real wonder-women – the courageous mothers who refused to give up on their children with cerebral palsy. When the patient in the private ward asked me the exact question as the one in the general ward before signing the consent form, I was able to see how identical our insecurities are, despite the class difference.
Hope and fragility were shown when the only birthday gift that my 12-year old patient requested, was to get discharged before his birthday, but unfortunately, we couldn’t grant it. I experienced the unpredictability of life, when a few hours before her daughter’s marriage, a woman presented with a brain bleed. I understood the feeling of true victory when a patient told me she “beat the hell out of breast cancer” ten years ago. And, when my first patient died, a piece of me died as well.
So at the end of the year, I feel most thankful to my patients who made me stay on the track when I was on the verge of breaking down. The ones who were kind enough to let me stick them for the third time when I was an amateur at sampling. The ones who let me learn from the most difficult situations of their lives. The ones who let me be present in their most intimate conversations and most challenging decisions. The ones who showed phenomenal courage in the face of tragedy. The ones who taught me lessons that I couldn’t possibly learn from anyone else. And the ones who kept my heart from subtle hardening and infiltration of cynicism and materialism.
Zarnain Shah is a Medical Officer in Pakistan. She completed her Internship at the Aga Khan University Hospital Karcahi in 2018. She is a common girl with some uncommon goals – a dreamer, reader, and writer- in that order! She writes at thedoctorwriteshere.wordpress.com. You can also follow her on Instagram @the.doctor.writes.
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As a final year student writing MBBS in a couple of weeks, this is what keeps me going. The chance to have this experience and finally have my years of studying and taking histories and examining patients and missing sleep finally make a difference. I can’t wait to experience these firsts too as an intern. Thanks for sharing!