Is this not the stereotypical image of a happy doctor????
During the day, I am expected to do this sort of thing. Doctoring. Looking after the sick and afflicted. Solving health problems. Some days though, perhaps because of the health area I work in, I feel a bit more like an over-qualified social worker. It’s tough being a doctor these days. I think a lot of non-medical people don’t realise that after you graduate as a fresh-faced green medical intern, you get paid perhaps something like $35 an hour. If you make any decent money as a junior doctor, it would be because you have given up all your weekends and nights to pick up shifts with penalty rates, which means you have no life to spend your money on anyway.
With the number of medical schools in Australia churning out medical students, it is getting increasingly difficult to find specialist training positions. These aren’t regulated by the government, by the way. The hospitals don’t care too much which jobs are training positions, and which aren’t. They are only interested in having X number of doctors to fill Y number of jobs, whether you pass your exams or not, is not really their concern. All they want is their shifts filled.
The number of training positions is regulated directly by all the specialist training colleges. And I am finding more and more that there is a disparity between what the colleges demand for accreditation of jobs as training positions, and what is actually practical to provide on a daily basis by supervising clinicians. I have recently had to fill in a detailed document on what my workplace provides for a trainee, and it was close to ridiculous how many hours I was meant to be spending babysitting. I mean, these are grown university graduates of supposed high IQ, come on!
As far as I’m concerned, as a clinical supervisor, I will be there for you to back you up when you need, act as a resource person and mentor, teach you practical skills where I can, but medicine is one of those jobs, where you seriously need to learn on the job and spend some serious practical time developing your style as a clinician. Of course, you are more than welcome to watch me in my daily staff/patient interactions, and to learn from me what you can, but ultimately every clinician has their own style of handling things. So many uncertainties and variations in medicine, guidelines should be used as guidelines, and not as gospel.
Anyway.
I have a lot more fun at my night job. I sketch and paint. And thanks to the magic of the internet and the immense support of my OH*, many medical and nursing colleagues, and personal friends, I now have a modest paying hobby creating artwork for them. Enough to bring some mental wellbeing into my life. Hopefully through my artwork, I am able to bring some joy to others who enjoy looking at my pictures.
The sketch below was done on an outing last year with Brisbane City Sketchers. I spied this little back alley along Charlotte Street, and thought the back view of these terraces told a great story. Who lives and works out of these? What do the insides look like? Minimalist and spartan? Or retro and cluttered? Or perhaps full of dust and cobwebs? Or a total bachelor pad? And who could miss that futuristic G-shaped balcony pod on the right side?
*Other Half
