MY CLINICAL ROTATION DIARY-11

By the second week things weren’t as tense.

One of the incidents that stopped the intimidation which I think I must share was this. We were asked to study the anatomy of an organ, this was spilt into three different subtopics.

The other student and I picked a subtopic each, but Martha decided it was best we had a something like a poll. She wrote the subtopics in papers, rolled it and asked each of us to pick one which we did. When I opened the paper I picked, the subtopic I had was the one she had chosen earlier. She made a statement about not wanting to exchange hers.

“I wasn’t going to give you”, I replied playfully.

After that incident, I observed that her attempts at intimidating me ceased. I also got to understand her personality a bit. This understanding helped my relationship with her, and we became good acquaintances before I left the department.

As regards today’s minor surgery, something unexpected (to me) happened.

I’ve been a bit laid back when it comes to asking for a hands-on during the rotation. One of the reasons is as a new kid on the block, I’m still trying to get used to how things work here. Trying to know my limits as an MS (Medical Student), and just understand my environment. There were times I felt “dull” because other students, especially my dear Martha, jumped at every opportunity to do things, she could perform a number of procedure which I knew next to nothing about (haha). I had to remind myself that she had been practicing for weeks. Vian, another student who’s a bit friendlier, visited the hospital last year on electives too. Bisi, the third student, just finished her rotation in another department of the hospital. I just finished my first week in the first department for the first time (at least in this setting). Reminding myself these helped take off some of the pressure I was putting on myself. But I’m a fast learner and it’s only a matter of time, I’ll measure up.

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