My Internship Experience

By: Dr. Zainab Ahmed

Ah, medical school. That once seemingly elusive journey of enlightenment was soon culminating in The Internship. The days of discussing Freudian theories in psychology class, skipping lectures to study for exams, pulling all-nighters in freezing study halls was coming to a quick end, tinged ever so slightly with nostalgia.

I was apprehensive; the thought of working full-time as a student doctor was quite intimidating. Would I be questioned on rare clinical syndromes (that Kaplan promised me was low-yield)? Would I be asked to interpret complex scans? If a patient arrested, would my sympathetic system freeze or flee? What kind of attendings would I be working with? I feared I would be the laughing stock of the hospital. It was not a pleasant time, made so much worse by sleepless nights, anxiety-fueled by a vascular system that was almost entirely coffee at this point. Whew.

I remember taking the bus on the first official day of work – sweaty palms, a backpack stuffed with books that I had deemed absolutely necessary to take, to look up obscure facts (Yes, I had indeed forgotten that I had the world wide web at my fingertips.) and tachycardia that would probably have required some kind of medical intervention. I greeted my fellow interns and was promptly informed that the elevators were busy and we had to climb 10 flights of stairs up to the urology ward. So much for looking fresh and professional on my first day of work.

The first day was exactly the antithesis of the glorious vision I had of saving lives; the attending physician had already left for the OR as he had had multiple surgeries lined up for the day and, ‘we could go home if we wanted or hang around’. My friends, you know what this naïve young lady did? She hung around the wards, well past lunchtime, so determined was this hungry (metaphorically and quite literally) scholar!

Alas, similar experiences eventually taught me a cardinal rule of internship – if you are dismissed, thank every supreme being watching from above and vaporise before some doctor asks you to hang around for her ‘very important’ lecture or you start being drilled on the side effects of some drug that you probably should know but your hypoglycemic self is now struggling to recall as it’s almost lunchtime (don’t judge me for not having reviewed my Anki cards please, thanks.)

Much like any experience, my internship was both enriched and complicated by the people I met – the gunners who could raise hands at speeds that I wondered didn’t give them whiplash, glared down by the nurses in the OR for any signs of breach in the sterile field, dealing with the frustrating hierarchy within the wards and the haphazard process of chasing evaluations and signatures from doctors who could barely tell one intern apart from the other.

In balancing the responsibilities of ward duties with studying, enduring the incessant quizzing, battling feelings of inadequacy, feeling like an imposter, I encountered a version of myself that was prickly, competitive and one who was in dire need of self-reflection. My journey taught me like all things in nature, I must learn the delicate art of mindfulness, rest and balance.

It’s not all doom and gloom, folks, for the worst of medicine is also it’s very best. I am ever so grateful for colleagues that turned into friends (for who better understands the frustrations of medicine), trading war stories, recommending the best lunch spots around and for the laughs at every lecture. Special shout-out to the kind doctor in the OR who helped me clean up after I managed to get blood splattered across my glasses during surgery (thankfully belonging to a patient who had nothing in their blood except too much sugar.)

For the lunches offered by surgeons, for the sweet old man in palliative care who said I was beautiful (yep, made my day), for doctors that make the time to teach even on their days off, for the people who keep elevator doors open for you and even the person who used my skin colour as a reference for their partner’s worsening jaundice; thank you. It was a pleasure and will continue to be so.

Zainab likes to read and know things. She also likes memes, poetry, and bad puns. You can follow her on Twitter via @zaihmed.

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