Countdown Mark One

So it's a mere fifty-eight days until the names are posted on the board and we are given our longed-for doctor badges.

I am bricking it.

Tomorrow morning I am going to see the parents, hideously early start, but guess what I have in my rucksack? That's right kids, my faithful and increasingly well-thumbed copy of the Oxford Guide to the Foundation Program. I do not know a thing, and the time is fast approaching that people will expect me to know things. I'm dreading stupid things, like the times when, try as I might, I can't get the darned venflon in the vein and I don't have a nice, friendly F1 to run to for help because I AM THE F1. Oh, the horror!

My boss in paeds said she has a strategy for telling whether or not new F1s are going to have an attack of newly-qualified-itis, a dangerous syndrome where the new doc in question mistakenly believes that they know things and know what they are doing - it is bad, it leads to death, and not of the doc. Apparently the thing to do is ask new F1s after 48 hours in the job if they still feel sick - if they say yes, you can relax, because when they have no idea what to do and someone looks a bit sick, these nauseated souls will call for senior help, pronto. The problems come when the new doc says 'no, I feel ok now, I'm getting the hang of it' - this is Bad News and means they must be watched closely for the first six months to prevent serious medical errors caused by misguided confidence. Depressing though this thought sounds, I reckon you can practice medicine for years and years and still not really have a clue what you are doing.

I can say with some confidence that I will still be puking several weeks after starting work, and I will have burned my SHO's bleep number into my arm for fear of losing it. I am already having 'starting work' dreams - the first crept up on me a week or so ago, and involved me losing my bleep on the first day and finding a bit of paper saying 'this girl seems to be trying to minimise her potential for promotion as she has lost her bleep already' - I woke up sweating.

But enough of this paranoia, I must go and pick up a t-shirt from across town to take out to my parents (my brother has seen the guy who has it every day for the last month and yet we are going the night before we leave...I won't ask). Have a good week, I may blog from the sun if I can think of anything sensible to say!