Throwaway account in case I accidentally dox myself. I’m an F1 and I absolutely hate my job and I dread coming to work most days. I know I’m not the only one who feels like this and I expect hundreds of F1s have felt like this before. But I’m too scared to word vomit this to anyone I know in real life.
Basically, I hate my job for the following reasons. They are all about systemic bullshit and nothing to do with medicine. Reddit, please tell me whether it gets better or whether I should quit before I sacrifice another decade to the dogshit employer that is the NHS?
- Rotational training
As soon as you get used to a place —how things work, where things are, the people—you move. It always takes me a fair while to get used to new things/people/places so I’m finding this really hard. You switch to a new specialty and they have limited patience for you not knowing how things work. And even if they are patient, I feel frustrated and fed up by not having a clue how to do things. What form do I need for this referral? What is this weird acronym? Which big city hospital sees xyz? Where do I find a bloody tourniquet?
- Beef with nurses
I’m young and a woman and I get so much pushback and rudeness from female nurses. Depressingly it is notable that I’ve hardly ever had a problem with a male nurse. I’ve tried being really nice, I’ve tried being less nice and just being politely assertive and straightforward, I’ve tried explaining my reasoning when asking for things, I’ve tried making sure to use their name always and be empathetic. But it’s really fucking hard when they’re rude, unhelpful, show no initiative and try to fob everything that’s slightly difficult onto you, and are constantly interrupting to harass you about not doing stuff quickly enough. Often when my male junior colleague is sitting right next to me, yet somehow it’s always me who gets the grief.
I am just so fed up with how HARD it feels to navigate this relationship.
From older, senior nurses, I get SO many comments about how young I look. Which at first was a bit funny and I brushed off. But sometimes the comments are really unprofessional and patronising and come with complete disrespect for anything I say or any clinical opinion I offer or decision I make.
How do people deal with this? Does it get better as you get more senior?
- Being a ward monkey and not learning
When does one actually learn to be a better doctor and gain new knowledge? Mostly I’m too overwhelmed by admin to think about learning anything clinical during my day job. I hardly touch a patient other than on call. Could I still recognise a murmur like I could in med school? Doubtful. What’s a neuro exam? Haven’t done a proper one since my OSCEs. Physiology? Idk, that’s the one Plato did isn’t it?
I want to do IMT and I know Reddit says it’s the worst thing in the universe but it would obviously be a necessary evil to reach an end goal. Are you still just a ward monkey in IMT? Do you still just sit around doing admin and a few bloods and getting abuse from micro cuz you haven’t cultured every orifice of your patient before calling them?
- Little independence
Sometimes I’m told I have to do things I disagree with by seniors. Usually minor things but have had multiple instances of continuing invasive treatment when someone is clearly dying and it just feels cruel and goes against my conscience.
OR I’m told to do something by specialist nurses / ACPs that I’m not totally sure about and I then feel caught in the middle of e.g. reg vs CNS. Or I’m prescribing something on their advice that I don’t think is quite right, but they’re the specialist, soooo
I know this will get better as I get more senior, eventually, but. do you ever get true independence and autonomy in the nhs? do consultants feel restricted by being pressured to follow guidelines / trust policy / “that’s just how we do it”?
- To the consultants of Reddit - is the end goal worth it? Do you get to do medicine you enjoy? Or are you as fed up and overwhelmed by the system as this F1?
TLDR:
I’m just so done. I’m not enjoying my job, I feel like I’m actively losing knowledge from medical school because I use most of it so rarely and I feel like I’m in constant battle with the MDT and the system of the NHS.
When I do actual medicine, I enjoy it. It’s interesting and I love feeling like I’ve made a difference to someone. But is that enough when 95% of the job isn’t that? How many years of misery do you give to this place before you throw in the towel and do something else?
Is this just part of being really junior and does it get better?