The Phuong Effect!

Today was my first day on the job as an Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) resident, having done a week of nights last week to kick off my residency. The nights themselves weren't too bad courtesy of a ward reallocation amongst the night JMOs which meant a fairer distribution of workload. Managed to get on average 3-4 hours sleep each night but the hot days made it tough to sleep and thus I felt perpetually zonked out!

Anyhow, it was nice to go back to a normal daytime job today and I rocked up to labour ward at 8am utterly terrified of what awaited me! For some reason, pregnant women who are considered the only 'healthy' patients in hospitals suddenly seemed like strange alien like creatures from another world that I had never dealt with before. And actually, if you've ever witnessed a live birth, newborn babies do kinda look like aliens all covered in goo!

However, despite my apprehensions, the day turned out to be pleasantly bludgy! It started off with what seemed like an incomplete ward round seeing mainly the gynae patients, followed by doing a few discharges and ordering a few tests. I was done by 9.30am and had coffee with my O&G colleagues! All along I was wondering whether there was something I was meant to be doing that I didn't know I should be doing... Then I thought to myself maybe I'm displaying 'the Phuong Effect!'.

Now let me explain. Phuong is a fellow resident at my hospital who somehow managed to get through pretty much most of her internship doing next to nothing work! She had bludgy terms, bludgy overtime shifts and basically if you were looking for her, there was only one place you'd find her - the doctor's lounge! I labelled this 'The Phuong Effect' - the ability of a doctor to repel work thus allowing the doctor to bludge! There's also 'the anti-Phuong effect' - doctors who have this effect possess the remarkable ability to attract non-stop paging by Tom, Dick and Harry, a list of jobs that only seems to grow bigger, and the unenviable privilege of staying back after 5pm to finish the aforementioned list of jobs!

Today was certainly a bludgy day and for the most part I didn't really know what to do with the time! I guess we'll have to see what tomorrow holds in store as I attend my first antenatal clinic...will 'the Phuong Effect' have worn off??!