The last fortnight has got me into the middle-grade rota, and I am learning so many new things. The most important thing, though, is the realisation that I am now responsible for all the patients everywhere in the department when I am on night duties or on long weekends and that the consultant may not be present on site. It is also humbling to know that the SHOs, who were, until the middle of February 2018, my "colleagues", are now, sort of, "under me", and come up to me to take the responsibility off their shoulders and leave it to me to make decisions. To be honest, some of them have been beacons of information that have helped me take cogent and medically sound decisions. So, a humble thanks to all my colleagues, young and old, junior and senior.
Coming to the actual decision-making process, it can either be a trifling matter and something quite easy to decide on, or can cause me to give it a lot of thought before answering! The matter, in itself, could still be a minor one, but the fact that what I say will be the final word can be quite a stressful thing to digest.
I am sure that with the passage of time, I will learn to take these kinds of things in stride. It's just that, with the new responsibility of managing these things day in and day out, I sometimes do get worried as to whether I took the right decision or not.
It helps that the new band of registrars who have come in since the end of the first week of March 2018 are a bright lot and very supportive. I may as well add that the consultants themselves are kind too. This was especially apparent during the first tranche of night duties that I did the previous weekend. It has helped that my line-manager is the head of Paediatric services too, and he has been keeping a benevolent eye on me.
In the end, I must say that this is a new area of the vast sea of experience that I am sailing in, and I know that if I keep my eye steady and my sails in the right direction, I should be able to sail smoothly and with the least possible difficulty. I request my readers to write in what they feel about this in the comments section. Thank you.
Coming to the actual decision-making process, it can either be a trifling matter and something quite easy to decide on, or can cause me to give it a lot of thought before answering! The matter, in itself, could still be a minor one, but the fact that what I say will be the final word can be quite a stressful thing to digest.
I am sure that with the passage of time, I will learn to take these kinds of things in stride. It's just that, with the new responsibility of managing these things day in and day out, I sometimes do get worried as to whether I took the right decision or not.
It helps that the new band of registrars who have come in since the end of the first week of March 2018 are a bright lot and very supportive. I may as well add that the consultants themselves are kind too. This was especially apparent during the first tranche of night duties that I did the previous weekend. It has helped that my line-manager is the head of Paediatric services too, and he has been keeping a benevolent eye on me.
In the end, I must say that this is a new area of the vast sea of experience that I am sailing in, and I know that if I keep my eye steady and my sails in the right direction, I should be able to sail smoothly and with the least possible difficulty. I request my readers to write in what they feel about this in the comments section. Thank you.
