going through blogs i found an interesting one written by a depressed medical student, talking about his many experiences during his training. at one stage he waxed on about having seen things that he was never supposed to see. i thought it fairly melodramatic. i read most of his stuff and realised he probably never should have studied medicine. it's just not for him. but, having said that he did say many things that were true. i found him quite inciteful.
i am a surgeon working in the province of mpumalanga in south africa. i love my job but the administration of the province and things like our country's aids policy can be frustrating to say the least.
anyway after reading his blog i was motivated to write something myself because:-
1) i think i can possibly bring a balance between his negativity and the true joy of actually making a difference in the world through medicine
2) when he spoke about all the things he saw etc i realised that those things have become commonplace to me. this does not mean they are commonplace to the average person. the point is i have quite a few amazing stories.
3)i am confronted daily with the frustrations of working in an underfunded government hospital in a province that is corrupt and doesn't care about it's people in the continent that the world traditionally also doesn't care about.
i'm not sure how this will go, but it may be interesting. it may also be boring as hell.
This comment is really to the first three posts. I think they were all very interesting and readible. I think you have partly achieved your goal of not been too negative, but unfortunately the focus is still on the deaths and especially those that could have been avoided. While that is certainly an important and interesting topic for much conversation, it does perhaps not quite reach the stated goal of finding a balance between the negativity and the 'true joy of actually making a difference in the world through medicine'.
ReplyDeleteSo, I look forward to a few more posts that add a bit more of the 'true joy' side of the equation :-)