With Dr Cheryl Martin
Keep asking questions, know that you are supported.
Remember that as an intern, you’re still undergoing training, and you have supervisors and senior support all around you. I think we often go into internship and feel a huge burden of responsibility – I know I did this myself – but you should be in a protected supportive environment.
The medical workforce is changing.
There's a lot of pressure to decide: What am I going to do? What am I going to train in? When I started medical school, I had just turned 18 and I didn't have much life experience to bring to the table. There's a lot of uncertainty about pipelines and training and where it might all end up; I think it's important to have a lens on that. Today’s medical students are often older than that when they enter. By the time you hit your training years, you're more likely to have other responsibilities in life, such as children and aging parents. So, acknowledging that and finding ways to create sustainability for yourself is important.
The most dangerous phrase you can hear in healthcare is ‘this is the way we have always done things’.
I feel that keeping creativity and innovation alive in the healthcare system, and championing intrapreneurship – innovation from within – is becoming increasingly important. There can be a tendency to give up our creative sides through the rigors of training but we really need to keep our creative passions and hobbies going and harness these skills and ideas inside the healthcare system – that’s how positive, impactful evolution and much needed cultural shifts and systems change happen.
There's a lot of delayed gratification that happens in medicine. Do joy first.
It can be hard within the context of quite rigid rosters but do try to actively schedule time for the things and people that are meaningful for you. I find the prioritisation analogy of keeping the glass balls in the air and letting the rubber balls drop useful. Imagine that you're juggling a mix of glass balls and rubber balls. The glass ones will shatter if dropped (these are your critical, irreplaceable people and commitments and the things which bring you joy), while the rubber ones will simply bounce (these are the tasks that can wait or recover from being deprioritised). Remember you are a glass ball too!
Dr Cheryl Martin (MBChB BSc Med Sci (Sports Medicine) FACEM MBA) is an emergency physician with a portfolio career and passionate advocate for healthcare systems evolution to support clinician health and wellbeing and enable patient safety and high-quality care. She is also the creator and host of the Mind Full Medic Podcast project. Listen to the Mind Full Medic.