"Your cancer starts with ‘can’, but, unfortunately, at this stage we ‘can’ do nothing about it." – a new intern on Scrubs Episode 1 Season 8. Medical students are, ofcourse, stupid and it is the internship that moulds them into world class physicians. My internship in the Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad has shown me that we can expect a few common things during internship.
- All the happiness that exists at the end of the final year MBBS usually dissipates by the end of the first week of internship.
- You will learn that as an intern, you don’t matter. In fact, you get in the way and impede productivity.
- You will learn the hard way the most important rule of internship “Always listen to the nurses.”
- The more enthusiastic you are, the more work you will get. The more work you get, the more the chances of fucking up.
- Every day and every call night will bring some secret humiliation and sometimes, physical torture (albeit rarely).
- Girls will act ‘over-smart’ and ‘extra hard-working’ only till the attendings are present. Then they return to their normal whimpering self.
- Girls will never attend overnight emergency duties citing ‘parental concerns’ or ‘security reasons’. So, never make a mistake of selecting a unit with your girlfriends as your co-interns.
- Third year medical students will always be extra- smart asses, so don’t dare to teach them any topic.
- You will always be looking forward to Sundays. Not because you want to enjoy, but because you have to catch up on those studies.
- Interns suffering from the dreaded ‘Saturday Unit Syndrome’ will often be depressed and irritable and sometimes, experience personality changes. (This syndrome affects interns in units with emergency duties on Saturdays).
- Never mention the word “Extra Emergency” to these interns with the “Saturday Unit Syndrome” or you will have to face dire consequences.
- The famous Barneyism “Nothing ever happens after 2 AM” is probably true when you are on call. Time literally stops between 12 AM to 7 AM.
- And when it is finally time to go at 8 AM after the overnight call, there will be a huge rush of patients, mostly myocardial infarction precipitated by shitting!!
- You will learn that “Patients never tell the truth”, often the hard way. You will find out that your history often differs from that the patient tells the attending.
- Internship turns hardcore atheists into theists. You will always be praying “Please God, no more new admissions.”
- The first year resident will always hate you, no matter how hard you work or how many snacks you get for him.
- Your co-interns will always act over-smart and ‘ass-hole-y’, especially if they are from other medical colleges (particularly Rajkot and Jamnagar medical colleges).
- Never ever go to an epidemic relief camp, if given an option. You will always be the only one working and you are supposed to suffer as much as the victims.
- You will spend more time on collecting laboratory results and pathology reports, waiting in the radiology department and making ‘pentas’, than you will on actually seeing patients. Most of your time on rotations will be wasted. Thrown away. Down the drain.
- Never ever mention that you are an intern while in the pathology department, blood bank or the radiology department. But always mention that you are an intern to the nurses, otherwise they won’t help you.
- You will probably serve as “The Official Retractor” in the surgery rotation.
- Don’t ever dare to laugh if someone farts during an ongoing surgery (even if with a sound).
- You’ll work with at least one surgery attending who you’ll scorn you for no reason and want to beat the pooh pooh out of you.
- You will learn that vaginal deliveries are messy and incredibly noisy, and that new-born babies are really slippery!!
- You will often wonder in the labor room “What the hell am I doing here?”
- You will learn that Obs-Gynec residents suffer from “Tunnel Vision”.
- You will often wonder “What the hell is the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine (PSM) actually doing in the Civil Hospital?”
- You will clean chairs for an attending and make sure that there is no nail protruding out of it before she sits on it. (Yup, these are usually the female kind.)
- You will hold a packet of biscuits for an attending, while he enjoys “Chai Biscuut”. (Yup, these are usually the male kind).
- You will probably repair scooters and receive relatives for some attending.
- You will probably work as a personal assistant for some of the attending’s relative who will think that the Civil Hospital is his/her personal property.
- Even though you have 12 ‘casual leaves’, you just can’t take a leave for casual reasons.
- You have to be admitted to the Civil Hospital in order to avail a ‘leave for medical reasons’.
- You will say this to yourself almost everyday “Why the hell did I get into medical school?” or better still “Why the hell did I get good scores in the 12th grade?” or even better “Why the hell did I listen to mom?”
- You will be jealous of your friends, many of whom will go onto great jobs and fantastic lifestyles. You’ll be faced with 3 more years of residency and then at least 2 years of fellowship before you’ll see any real earning potential.
- In the end, you will realize that it is not at all necessary to spend a lot of hours running after your attendings to get your completion signed.
P.S. Please name the “Saturday Unit Syndrome” as the “Jigar syndrome”, if somebody ever proves it’s existence!! And all you smart asses are more than welcome to contribute to this list, if you find something missing.
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