I really enjoyed the start of my GP rotation, but now at only 2 months in, I feel drained. The end of each day drains me more and more. This wasn’t what I expected, as I was going into this rotation thinking it could be a potential career. But now, I’m not thinking that. I have a newfound respect for GPs and how they deal with the constancy of their clinics and days. There is endless admin, follow-ups, typing, letters, referrals, organising tests, meeting patient expectations and quick diagnostics. I don’t see anywhere near as many patients as an F2 that actual GPs do, and I still feel like this.
But, there must be something else. Not working Fridays, weekends and nights must be better, surely? Coming into this, I thought that working on my own seemed great, no one telling me what to do, learning constantly, having my own independence, but I guess I was wrong. Each patient is unique, and I do like speaking to people, generally. Some parts are repetitive, I don’t love typing so much and working at a screen all day isn’t ideal.
I think it’s the feeling of progressing towards something that’s missing. Each person, each patient, each case just has so much delay to finding out the answer. In reality, people are so much more complex than a clinical vignette. They have so much going on sometimes that it’s overwhelming. Or they don’t have much going on at all, and it’s not intellectually stimulating. I have yet to find that sweet spot of challenge and curiosity at my skill level in GP to find it enjoyable. If things I advise and do help, you never hear from them again. If things I advise don’t help, I will be sure to be the first one to hear about it. The way this is just is not satisfying. I understand that is the system.
But, it would be nice to be able to hear that things you said and did actually helped. It would be nice to get more positive reinforcement. Them never coming back doesn’t feel like enough. I want to track their lives in a way. I am so interested in finding out what is happening behind the scenes, outside the appointment.
Maybe there is a way to do this in the future. Maybe I just need to audit my own work to find out, call each and every patient I’ve met so far on GP and see how they’re getting on. That would be nice. I do remember most of them.
I think another thing that’s missing from GP is the camaraderie. Everyone has a million things to do, so always seems in a rush. I have met lovely people and it is nice chatting through patients with supervisors that care. I didn’t expect to miss that. You start and end the day on your own. A small handover at the end of the day would be nice. Some clinical and some not so clinical chat. I’m grateful to at least have this when I go home.
I guess another aspect of GP is that it is pure service provision and ‘customer satisfaction’. I haven’t met GPs here that have other projects going on, research or wider goals. Maybe they do and I just don’t know it. But, I’m almost too drained after each session to even socialise with them and learn these things.
We’ll get there. Wherever there is. We’ll find a way to forge a meaningful path in this thankless career, one way or another.
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