Monday, October 24, 2011

November Schedule

Well, there's no way of knowing how my schedule will keep working out in Dec/Jan/etc, but for November at least I've been able to get one that's entirely made up of 9pm and 10pm to 7am shifts, which is fantastic (doubly so, if I can keep that going for the next few months as well).

I should be a lot less exhausted with a fixed schedule. Even if it's one fixed at night like this. Plus, as I'm sure I've said before, I enjoy being around hospitals at night (always, really, but especially at night).

Whether I can make good use of the new schedule with studying remains to be seen. If I can't... problems. If I can, things might be looking up.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

What do they call someone who got a 70 in Med School?

A: A doctor.

Words of encouragement from a nice Doctor who had the night shift after I had just passed my training (yay! I passed~) on the lower end of the score requirement (not 70, since we needed an 82% to pass, but same idea). I didn't do all that bad, really. I don't want to overly criticize the test, since we're not supposed to criticize/talk about internal processes, plus it's not fair to since they're in the middle of rearranging the test. I'll just say that because of that rearrangement a few questions were asked multiple times and, for some reason, those mostly happened to be the questions I didn't know. So instead of getting -1, I got a few -2's for not knowing one thing.

Not to excuse me or anything - I'm still responsible for knowing the material whether it's asked one time or a hundred.

From now on there's just sort of a constant evaluation process I think, where the HPIs/forms I write up get randomly audited on a once (I think) per month basis, and an unknown doctor evaluates me once per month as well. So if I can do ok, and avoid making anyone dislike me, things are starting to look like they're going well (enough).

My biggest concern is getting to my studying now. My exam studying. As neat/fun/interesting as this job is, it's been a huge drain on my time completely incommensurate with the number of hours I've been working. Studying for the job, taking shifts at odd hours, and driving up to DC for my PT, and then back for a job, has resulted in me staying up for the better part of three days in a row at times, with little naps here and there. I'm hoping as of November I'll get a more consistent schedule, and I know I can officially ease up with the job-related studying now. But I still have to find/make self-study time.

My apartment still has little furniture. I'm giving increasingly serious thought to a sofa as a place of study because otherwise... I'm just doing it on the floor or something. And that's not conducive to studying at all. A table is probably less relaxed than a sofa, but I've not been too goo about working at tables previously; a little bit of coziness isn't all bad. It would have to be a pretty cheap sofa though...