A Student's Guide to Consultants

Consultants generally come in 3 flavours...

• Pain in the ass - Common - comes as standard with the return of the Mr. prefix
  
• Funny (or trying to be) - Rare but worrying comment often ensue
  
• Up themselves - Becoming rarer through time
  

I would consider avoiding all of them but you will have to talk to them at some point in your training and working life. So you can easily see which of these you would rather tangle with (get your mind out of the gutter!) but to be honest even the funny ones are dangerous.

Maybe it's a basic fear but to be honest I'd rather go be an idiot in front of the ward's SHO (she's so sweet and maybe I have a tiny bit of a crush there). Of course placement thinks that I should be planted in front of consultants as often as possible as some sort of bizarre immersion therapy. Those poor sods having to suffer me. OK it boils down to this... I wasn't in for 2 days and then they ask (read tell) me to be on the ward rounds for both of our consultants. I'll admit this now, I do not know everything about our 20-something patients. I do know a lot about the 10 patients I spent last week working with and I have a handover. Let's go wing it!

Actually it didn't go too badly. Thank goodness. It could have been so much worse....

Most important lesson about consultants? Avoid or at least be polite.... then run and hide.

Quote from today... (finished talking to patient who's ears are stuffed with olive oil drops)
Doc - Olive oil embolism?
Me - I'll refer him to Gordon Ramsay then.