"I want to join emergency medicine because ... " The intern exclaimed.

Hello everybody

 I'm back yet again with an innocent encounter that I'd like to share ! You can call us as the withdrawal writing because I've been away from my blog for quite a long time and now I can't stop! 

My blogs about emergency medicine have a decent exposure making me "go to person" to anybody who is interested to join emergency medicine. This blog is one of such conversation I have had.

A friend of mine connected me to her cousin who wanted to join emergency medicine .She said her cousin was quite interested in emergency medicine and thought I would be the right person to help and guide her. I might not be the best person but I do whatever I can to help her , I reassured her.

The Fresh med school pass out had just started her internship. I immediately started explaining her the options she can opt non-stop for about a minute and then I realized she was puzzled. 

I realized I was too fast and went back to the ABC approach.I would found these dialogues cliche in interviews but now I think these were essential to make sense and create sense in the conversation.

I began the conversation with the most cliche question ever "Why do you want to join emergency medicine? "

She gave me the most innocent answer ever! "because I want to treat everybody, emergency physicians treat everybody in crisis .They know everything.They help everybody that's the reason I want to be one !"

I smiled. There was a little millisecond of pride, happiness, joy but I wanted to know more so I continued... 

Knowing the fact that she was a pass out from the COVID 19 generation, the students that saw these number of clinical cases, I asked her if she has ever been to the emergency room of her hospital,

to my surprise she said, No. I smiled again.

I continue with my next question ,"Do you know any emergency physician personally?" she said , No.

I asked about her academic background and she was a decent student scoring good grades.

She had hardly completed her postings.

I took a minute because I didn't want to be greedy to pull people into my specialty nor would I want somebody to land up into something they are not aware of. I had to be really careful with my words my tone to explain a very fresh mind of what she is learning into I didn't want to scare s*** out of her nor did I want to make things look very rosy. Being in the speciality for a while, I understand the impact of your seniors words on a budding mind can have. 

"I see your interest in emergency medicine already and it's good to see your intention to help people !Honestly all doctors should be able to be able to help or handle emergency conditions once they pass out of the medical school .You need not have to be an emergency physician for that.

My advice to you would be to complete your postings at least 6-8 months of your clinical postings ,go to the surgery rotations, go to the medical wards, ICUs , emergency room in your own medical college . Go to the emergency department running in your hospital, go talk to the emergency physicians there . observe them.Probably do do about 1 or 2 extra shifts there keep yourself in that high pressure environment, see how your mind takes it.

Observe how comfortable you are in a crowded environment like that of emergency, see how comfortable you are with people shouting at you even when you're right ,see if you can be the person who can be declaring patient dead at that at one point one time and then continuing your work the very next second. 

Once you sign up for a Emergency Medicine course there will be dozens of people walking upto you convincing you to leave it suggesting alternative specialities. Especially as a female , about your shifts. You have to have a strong mind to shrug off those suggestions and focus. 

 I am saving your contact in my phone .You can always reach out to me but I would want to guide a rather informed person who has seen things , you have time , observe and then will figure out what to do next. Will stay in touch. I would be really glad if you see emergency department observe things there and then come back to me saying you want to be the person working in the department . I would be more than happy to guide you."

She agreed. She was satisfied. Our conversation ended here.

As a medical grads all of us are trained/ supposed to be trained to save lives in emergency .All of us are supposed to know but what keeps an emergency physician distinct from others is having to do it every day every minute with the same amount of energy . Whether you are a software engineer or a businessman or an emergency physician or a surgeon, you will have burn out at some point of your life. We are humans, this is bound to happen. You would want to really like your specialty to work on yourself and get back to it with the same energy to something that drained you out.

 In my opinion , it's always good to have some exposure as an observer or as an intern in a department before landing up there to do your post graduation . This would be my personal perspective towards decisions like these. What do you think could I have told anything better because it was I was explaining somebody with such naive mind who was not aware of the specialty yet being interested in it . Please comment below.

So far so much.