Correction to the last post: I guess there was one attending in the group whom I didn’t totally antagonize. If we were playing a game of “pick one attending you’d like to be on the good side of,” I’d have chosen him, since he’s powerful, and has a very sharp tongue when he’s displeased. Actually, I don’t know how, I seem to have impressed him well enough that as I spent the morning stumbling through rounds, he remarked a couple of times: “I know Dr. Alice is a very good resident. In fact, she’s one of the best we’ve had all year. I don’t know what’s happened to her this morning, but I guess we can excuse her for one day.” Mmm, thanks; I suppose there’s a limit to how many days I can work straight, no time off, pushed to the limit, pulled in a dozen different directions for critically ill patients every ten minutes, without starting to crack a little bit. So I picked a good attending to stay friendly with.

In other ways, this day has to have been one of the worst of the year. More than one patient with seriously bad outcomes, which are maybe somehow someone’s fault. I can’t honestly tell whether it’s truly my fault, but I keep getting caught in this whirlpool: I should have done something different, I really should have; could I have changed this? was it physically possible for me to be in enough places to have caught this? I should have known; I should have, I should have. Some of the more senior residents saw me standing still, I guess looking as miserable as I felt, and made some remarks that I shouldn’t get too personally involved with the patients. I told them briefly what had happened, and they backed up. “Well, as bad as that, ok.”

All year, when I breezed through things, the seniors and chiefs have told me, “We’re paranoid, and after you have enough patients get hurt around you, you’ll be paranoid too.” The last month I think does it for me, and especially the last few days. Now I know why the best doctors here are obsessive about every single detail – because you never know which detail is going to come back to bite you, maybe to kill or maim your patient.

The best junior residents I’ve watched all year were the ones who came in early and stayed late, even when they were working night shift, or post-call, to double-check on things, and watch over patients till the oncoming team had thoroughly grasped the situation. Now I know what drives them, and I resolve to simply stop caring what time of day it is. I’ll mark my hours how I please, but I’ll stay, every single time, till I know all the details, till the next team knows all the details. Nothing outside of the hospital matters compared to making sure I’ve done the best possible for every person I’m responsible for. I am sick of seeing what can happen when things slip through signout; perhaps more precisely, I’m sick of worrying about whether something slipped.

On the other hand, as I contemplate being on call the Fourth of July (I was expecting that; given the small number of junior residents, and the surgical attitude of “throw them in the deep end and see if anyone figures out how to swim,” I knew I was going to be on call very early in the month), I realize that this month, as nightmarish as it’s been, has made me feel very comfortable with handling all kinds of calls about ICU patients, and semi-comfortable with the prospect of juggling admissions, consults, and disasters by myself. I guess there’s an element of familiarity about it too: I’ve been looking ahead to this kind of responsibility for a year, and I think I know better what’s expected of me (if not what I should expect) than I did heading into internship. (Now if various seniors would just stop making rueful remarks about me being a junior in three days. I can’t tell if they’re serious or not, or how concerned they are.)

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