Stress Management and clinical placement after-hours

Stress
In an almost ironic fashion when contrasted against my last post, this post is about Stress Management.

It turns out, from a DASS assessment, I have severe stress. Funny about that, because I don't feel stressed. Even though I have good reason to be stressed. I have been feeling irritable and frustrated. Mental health can be funny like that and irritability can be a symptom of chronic depression and/or anxiety.

Exercising regularly has some good evidence for its effects on stress. This morning I began my now daily goal of 20-30 minutes of exercise each morning. This sounds like a massive commitment to me, but I think I just needed a really good reason to prioritise my fitness. One of the problems is obviously I'm quite time-poor, but the other one is that I actually feel really good. I don't feel unfit or unwell or any need to do exercise (other than stress management).

Clinical placement after-hours
I am currently at the hospital after-hours (after 5pm) doing my clinical placement in paediatrics. Tonight, we have no patients admitted to the ward, There are 4 in special care nursery, all doing fine. The ED has my number, and so does the Paeds Reg. So, I'm up on the ward just getting some study in. I'm behind. As usual.

I have one topic a day to cover during my rotations (5 a week). So, for example, tonight I'm covering asthma which has a 30 minute lecture to watch, and the entire chapter of childhood asthma in Nelsons Textbook of Paediatrics, which is pretty substantial. That on top of your day on the ward, and, oh yeh, that little thing called "a life" outside of medicine.

I really wish I had decided to have a life before I decided to get this far into medicine.

Mothers in Medical School

Have you checked out the blog Mothers in Medicine? (Good for Fathers in Careers too.)

I started reading it when I was thinking about going into medicine (and medical school) and how that might fit with my future desire to have children.

Well, now I'm living it. The MiM website is very US-based, and I think the general conditions for medical students and junior doctors in Australia isn't quite so tough.

The other things is that I tend to do most of my hospital rotations in rural areas. The workload is much less and therefore the demands and expectations for staff/students to live every waking moment in the hospital is also less.

I also study my degree by distance, so that makes "class" time flexible to suit my family schedule.

I also set boundaries. I say: "Sorry, but I am only available during these times" or "I need to know my roster in advance to work around daycare". I am unapologetic about being a mother and child/childcare commitments and the importance of these in my life and that they are second to my medical career (I realise I said: "sorry" and "unapologetic" in the same thought, but I think you get my point).

Does this mean I can still become a world-class cardiologist? I'm really not sure about that. Perhaps. But I'm not interested that. What I want out of this degree and career is something more lifestyle- and family-friendly. I'm thinking GP-land as it's much more flexible and shorter training (you can do it part-time, for example) and is more likely to fit around childcare hours, although if I decide I REALLY want to do Emergency Medicine then I'm sure I'll figure it out (nanny/au pair/baby sitter etc).

Anyway, there are a few positives for juggling both a baby and a career, and here are some of mine. It makes you:

• More motivated. You do it for them as well as yourself.
• More time efficient. No time to spare procrastinating.
• Focus on the essentials (see above).
• Appreciate the time you have both with and away from baby.
• Forget the woes of the hospital when you get home, and vice-versa.
• Put the important things into perspective more easily.
• Work harder to be a better role model.
• Better at multi-tasking.
• More creative with how you get stuff done (phone calls in the car, for example).