Eaten up

The two Robina nights were quite fine. I only saw one patient and that was a favour done for a clinician. 

What you told me about assertiveness never left my mind. But each and every time my unassertiveness leaves unpleasant lingering marks in me, I understand again the feelings imparted in your words. Those seemingly insignificant mini moments do eat me away, the implicit disrespect from people, the intrusion of my boundaries be it in daytime work or on-call space. I realize I cant work this way for long, coming to a new rotation or shift to first assess whether my clinician colleagues are good and responsible workers. I remind myself that I'm a doctor, I'm the medical lead at night, I decide how the scene look like. Times that I did not exert myself and get my points across, things slipped off my control. I find myself sitting with my own thoughts after certain conversations are over and thinking it shouldn't have happened that way, or regretting switching my ground too quickly unconsciously just to agree with people. I need to remind myself that I do not come to work to please people, to want to get along with people and to be likeable. I should not apologize for not agreeing with certain views, or explain my views by lowering myself but rather to point out facts neutrally only. 

In my first two years of regging I was focusing on doing accurate assessments. In most shifts I was too busy dealing with acute clinical duties. I recently found the other more subtle issues. Working with different clinicians (and not letting their years of experience working in the same job which they take pride in dominates my clinical judgement), communicating with ED nurses/doctors (and to not let their claim of busy ED with trauma calls compromise the safety of our patients who also deserve good care, and to not feel small myself knowing that obviously the medical concerns of my patients are not as CAT 1 or 2 as the other ED patients but ain't they patients at the ED too) are things that I need to be good at. And to remind myself to know my position. I'm a doctor, I'm a psych reg, I'm the medical lead in the absence of consultants. I can't stop the weight of responsibility falling on my shoulders, the same way nobody can change the fact that they need to listen to me, because they have to. And I first, need to be sure of myself and my worth.