Grievances.

So, how quickly my attitude has again changed to being unable to find ANYTHING to like about my surgical rotation...

Today just got under my skin. First off, my preceptor is only practicing because he is old (71) and thinks he will just whither and die if he has to sit at home. That is fine and all, but he spends so much time socializing with his patients that we get WAY behind. I don't particularly care, but his office manager starts to freak out, and usually directs her stress at me, as if I can do anything to hurry him up....

...if that isn't bad enough, he makes personal phone calls between patients that last FOREVER. Today it was arguing with a lady from some publishing company about a book that he was dumb enough to order twice off a website (because he is technologically retarded). He was on the phone for like 25 minutes WHILE PATIENTS WERE WAITING.

Then we finally get out of the office at 12:30 and we have a surgery at 1:30pm. I rush my ass through a crappy hospital lunch to make sure I'm on time. When I get there I find out that the surgical case in the room ahead of us is not yet finished, so I had to wait in the staff lounge where all of the nurses give me the stink eye. Interestingly enough, my preceptor didn't show up until way later....he had been called and told that the OR was running late. Did he call me to pass on the message? Nope. He just let me wait around for an extra hour twiddling my thumbs.

Now the next part is my fault: after celebrating my improvement in sterile fields in yesterday's post, I made a few rookie mistakes today in the OR which prompted the overly-moody surgical RN to mutter under his breath something about "have you ever BEEN in an OR?" He actually didn't finish the sentence, but I definitely heard "have you ever BEEN," and it was pretty easy to fill in the rest.

In the actual surgery, Dr. Conservative was nice enough to sharply increase my responsibilities in my last week as a 1st assist by letting me pull out the trocars at the end of the surgery today. For those non-medical types, this is something my 2 year-old niece could do.
(ie: pull black thing with white handle out of belly. Good job).

3 more days.

Jen

PS - Did you know that being a Jehovah's Witness means you're in a cult? This gem of information is courtesy of my doc's office manager. Faaaantastic.