Anchors Away

I value stability.

And unfortunately, this is something that my medical training has not been able to offer me.

In the past three years, I have lived in 3 different towns attached to 3 different healthcare services. But by far, my final year has been worse.

Due to my scattered placements, I have had to relocate hours away from every placement every 6 weeks this year, and I've hated it.

My health has suffered greatly because I have had no continuity of care. The General Practitioner that I have seen most recently has diagnosed me with Iron and Vitamin D deficiency today, and I need a follow up with her in 3 months. I'll probably be able to do that, but guess what? After that, I'll be 4 hours away, so I'll need to find yet another GP.

Don't even get me started with filling up forms that ask for a permanent address (I don't have one) or for any long term information (your guess is as good as mine).

If you want to know a major contributing factor to the decline in the state of mental health of medical students everywhere, I'd personally put my money on the lack of stability that the course facilitates. And I haven't even started taking about the trauma that comes with changing your working and living environment every 6 weeks.

Oh, and of course, it doesn't end there.

For the next 5 to 10 years of my medical training, although it gets slightly better, there's still a lot of moving around involved, and I'm not looking forward to it.

Last time I checked, I signed up to be a doctor, not a sailor.

Poor form, medical training. Poor form.