The Big Changeover

The biggest day in hospital diary is the day where all junior/senior doctors changeover in August. Outpatient clinics are reduced or cancelled to allow for a less chaotic changeover. Team leaders from different departments in the hospital will be asked to do a short presentation to the new group of doctors, as part of the hospital induction.

On this day, fresh junior house officers begin their career as doctors, learning to apply everything learned in medical school into clinical practice.

On this day, ex-juniors become senior doctors, embarking on new challenges and bigger responsibilities.

On this day, most doctors will start work in a different ward or hospital, whereas a few others will remain in the same place.

This particular day is said to be the worst day to be admitted into the hospital, as errors do happen, and most things will be disorganised.

My changeover day was not bad at all. I started off doing night shifts, which is absolutely fine, because I get to escape the morning chaos in the wards. However, on my night shift, there was a junior doc who was absolutely terrified of doing anything! *Bless her!

She was terrified of writing up a patient's drug chart.

She was terrified of taking a blood sample from a patient.

She was even terrified of waking a patient up at 3 am for a physical examination!

Poor gal....I have honestly never seen anyone as scared as before!

Anyway, with a little push, she plucked up the courage to do a few basic things during the night shifts.

Apart from being terrified, she appeared absolutely clueless as well. The one thing that I remembered the most from that night shift was she didn't know how to prescribe paracetamol!

In my very humble opinion, I think that is the simplest prescribing task ever! How could she not know how to prescribe that? hmm...Maybe I am expecting abit too much from a junior house office.

The big changeover day has passed, and work resumes as usual for everyone.