In the blink of an eye, I have acclimatized to being a registrar for the last 6 weeks. The pros of being a registrar are that 70% of the time I am just giving out the plans and only 30% of the time I will need to execute the plans. So basically less writing, more listening, and more contact with actual specialists and consultants. I am technically a middle man and if anything goes wrong, I need to take the blame. Working with various people made me learn one thing - you need to encourage them even when they are really bad at their work because you still need them in the team and the last thing you would want is for them to feel discouraged. Somehow I felt a sense of accomplishment when I managed to transfer a skill down to my junior and perhaps I got a boost in my confidence too when they responded with gratitude. I am not a theory type of person so most of the time I do feel anxious if I teach the wrong things to others but in terms of practicality, I am clear on my decisions and actions and thus more comfortable sharing my knowledge.
Despite being able to adapt to the new position, I am quite upset to learn that I need to serve an additional duration due to multiple reasons. Well, it is not just me two of my colleagues are also having the same fate. The whole situation was pretty unfair as I am not sure what was the selection criteria and why some people get to serve the same post for a shorter duration and some longer. I am concerned as I find that I have barely much time for my hobbies and studies and the most annoying part is getting phone calls even on my post-on-call day. I suddenly felt tired of the fact that I needed to reset my countdown timer for "graduating" from being a registrar. Why do I hate this position so much? simply because:
1) I do not have actual power as the supporting staff (nurses/ medical assistants) would not listen to my instructions as long as it is not from my superior (which is very frustrating as superiors are not directly involved in the actual work 90% of the time)
2) If anything goes wrong, I am answerable. (This is the most "WTF" moment for me as like I mentioned in point number 1, I have no powers so why make me accountable? besides I do not agree with some of the plans that my superior asked me to carry out *up rolling of eyeball)
3) There's a lot of extra work with no added benefits and it is sort of injuring my additional source of income as I do not have time to do private cases.
Therefore I am extremely not happy with the current tentative arrangements. However, it is tentative so if there is some sort of miracle, maybe things will be reshuffled and I can stick with the old plans. Besides, my exam is less than a year and my priority is to pass the exam. Yes, if I can only have one goal that would be to pass the exam because my life has like on pause ever since I enrolled in this course and I have not travelled out of the country nor gone for my long-due honeymoon and have missed many important events involving my Loved ones. I still cannot forgive myself for not making it to my one and only sibling's registration of marriage. Right now, I am just thinking of my aged dog Rainbow and he is the source of my strength. I really pray he would wait for me to go home and spend time with him again because I know every time we part there is a possibility of it being the last goodbye. I just find all these sacrifices to be not worth the time and money spent and if I have a single piece of advice for young ambitious people, it would be "What you want badly now may not be what you want later on in life, try to see yourself in 10 or 20 years later, what kind of life do you want to live?"
If I was not bonded by a scholarship and a hefty penalty for breaking the bond, I would have called it quits. I know all these will end in less than a year but what awaits me can be quite horrible. The truth is I will be the junior most person again once I graduate as a specialist and because everything is so hierarchical, being back to the bottom sucks. I have started to plan out my future now so as not to repeat the mistake of the 18-year-old girl who was once so ambitious and energetic that no one could talk her out of her dreams or the 27-year-old who thinks that climbing up the career ladder is all that matters. No, the current person wants stability, time with family, and being able to plant firm roots in one place (no more nomad life please). A friend once told me the decisions we make now affect the course of the future and this is indeed true as I experienced first hand how at each point of life I had the option to choose the path of less resistance but I ALWAYS choose the path with hardship and the advice that I do not heed haunts me now.
My parents told me to be a dentist and I adamantly said it is so boring to just look at the mouth and teeth. It is so ironic because even now I still look at mouth and teeth as a regular assessment for the "airway" of my patients.
My in-law asked me to resign and join aesthetic medicine and I declined feeling that all my years of hard work just to apply it to making people beautiful feels like it was not the purpose I did medicine. (My initial purpose was to serve the people in my hometown, it's a small cowboy town, and not many locally produced medical practitioners). Right now, I do not think I need to fulfill the initial purpose anymore as I learned that the patient-doctor relationship has changed so much that it is no longer peaceful to practice medicine. We need to practice defensive medicine to save our rice bowl. Every day is a potential day to getting sued by a patient and we tend to order a lot of unnecessary investigations just to "cover" ourselves. The documentation is extensive! I think I write a lot and I need to constantly purchase new pens. On top of that the pay is pitiful. So yes, if I had listened and opted for something that was not my passion but had better pay maybe the additional pay could be a compensation. Then again, I do not know if I will be living in "what ifs".
Alright, what is done is done. I am not going to make the same mistakes I did when I was younger. Now I need to forecast and evaluate how I want to live the next 20 years of my life and probably talk to people who are double my age to gauge how I should take my next step. Then again this world is ever-changing and their advice might be outdated. it is just too bad we cannot respawn at the parts we felt we made a bad decision.
Okay this post is so negative that I feel like my energy is being sucked out just by writing it down. I shall inhale positivity and exhale negativity. Things will get better - they always do.
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