Ok, I think the unannounced hiatus is over. No administration characters came after me, so I’ll be around until the next time I can’t even stand to talk to people.

I was going to say even the politics hadn’t really gotten to me that much, but today I realized differently: being a junior is a bad place to be as far as politics is concerned. For one thing, we get a lot of attention: the attendings and chiefs interact with us more, and depend on us more, than they do the interns. So whatever we do right, or more likely, wrong, is sure to be noticed and commented on by multiple people – possibly in front of us, certainly behind our backs. This knowledge can induce near-paralysis in some juniors; and the resulting mockery only makes it harder to function. I’m trying to avoid that pitfall; but being too cocksure will get you in trouble, too.

In addition, since we’re sort of in the middle of the hierarchy (ok, only one step above the bottom), we hear from everyone: the chiefs find us safe confidantes for their views on the attendings, the other chiefs, the interns, and our fellow juniors (the hardest to handle). The interns, once they stop being scared, tell us what bothers them the most about the chiefs and attendings. And of course the juniors as a group are constantly trading between each other the latest gossip or tips about each other, the chiefs, and the attendings. (As in, “X chief will yell at you if you so much as give a bolus without letting him know; so I call him all night long.” Or, “Z chief is unlikely to answer pages or phone calls anytime after 7pm, so don’t waste effort on him unless you need him in the OR.”)

But it’s the up and down gossip that drives me crazy: in the last two months, I think every single chief has said something bad to me about every other chief, and every other junior. And I sit and listen to them. The worst part is, I know when I’m not there they have to be saying the same things about me to someone else – and which one of the people whom I think to be my friend is listening, and agreeing?

The last week I was planning what to write when I got back on here. I thought of reworking the old cliche, that we’re not really like those medical dramas on TV. Then I thought, with all the personalities going on here, and all the sick patients we take care of, and all the nurses and doctors who really do get together, the only differences are 1) the dramas play out more slowly, over days and weeks, and things rarely climax in a fight in the front lobby 2) the people who get together do it outside the hospital. Other than that, there are enough subplots going on to keep two or three soap operas running.

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