Fairy Tale
A Fairy Tale Of First Year by Dr Frigmund Pseud
Wednesday, 22 February 2006
Once upon a time, there was a nice young first-year psychiatry registrar called Sam, who was non-gender-specific, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Let's call her a she.
On the first day of her first-year job on the acute psych ward at the University of Topia Hospital, Sam was met at 9am sharp by her consultant, Dr Fay E Godmother, who took her aside and said in calming tones:
"Welcome to your new career. The field of psychiatry is one of the toughest, but most rewarding jobs in the Whole Kingdom. Because it can be so tough, we have trouble attracting people to work in the field, which makes it tougher for everyone already working therein. So it's really important that you have a good experience this year, because then you'll want to stick around, and you'll tell your friends how wonderful psychiatry is, and they WON'T think you're as mad as your patients for saying so, and everyone will live Happily Ever After. Now come along and see the ward..."
With that, Dr G waved her magic wand and lo, they were in the Nurse's Station, where all the nurses were singing from the same hymnsheet as the doctors, a song about how wonderful it is to work on an acute psychiatry ward. It went something like this:
"O, people come here in distress,
We give them tenderness,
A chance at ventilation,
And carefully-monitored philosophically-justifiable medication."
You had to be there.
"Nice one, team", cried Dr G. "Now, Sam, I want you to meet Dr Fatima System, our covering Senior Psychiatric Registrar. Thanks to Minister Jack And The Bean Counters, we have her to make sure that when the system is under pressure, such as when the first-years are settling in, or when someone goes on leave, there is enough person-power to meet the demand. Neat, hey?"
"Hi, Sam", said Dr System, who was jolly. "You'll see that we've allocated you fewer patients than you'd usually have, just for the first few weeks while you settle in. If you are unsure of anything and you can't get hold of Dr G, just ask me - I'm feeling like helping as much as I can, because I've just submitted the last of my paperwork for election as a fellow to the College, and the whole process has been a breeze. The training here was top-notch, there was never a moment when my education was compromised by service-provision pressure, and the exam process was transparent, humane, and efficient. God, I love psychiatry!"
At that moment, Sam was tapped on the shoulder by an enormous feline. In boots."Hello", it said. "I'm from the Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team. You'll be working with us quite a lot this year, so I thought I'd let you know that we're aware how difficult it can be when you start out in psychiatry. We've got a fair bit of experience, but we understand that it's your arse in court if the litter hits the fan, so we won't ever try and railroad you into a decision, or pressure you to discharge patients before their bums have made a dint in the mattress. We all know that would just cause a revolving-door effect, which would waste resources and cause much pain to patients and their families. Purrrrrrrrrrr."
Later that week, Sam left the ward at precisely midday to go to her University Course, where a lovely old man who looked a bit like Michael Gambon in the third Harry Potter movie gave a heartwarming address:
"Good afternoon, cherished first-years. You are the future of psychiatry. Just as many valuable plants are nurtured in a greenhouse before being exposed to the elements, we strive to provide the right conditions for you to grow. This University course will concentrate on all the aspects of psychiatry that you won't gain access to through your local academic programme, such as the rich historical and philosophical background of modern psychiatry, and the description of the human condition as manifest in art, literature and language. And of course, since the College has made this course compulsory, you won't be charged a cent. That's how important your education is to us, the current guardians of our discipline, who will someday hand the baton over to you. Welcome."
After the lectures, Sam and her fellow first-years went out for dinner, as most of them were not on-call. They drank a toast to their superiors, grateful that the rosters had been arranged so that on-call demands grew along with the first-years' confidence, especially avoiding weekend and public holiday work until such time as the experience would be beneficial to both clinician and the patients they served.
With a belly full of non-pharmaceutical-company-procured food and beverage, Sam turned to her colleagues and said "Golly, I'm glad I decided to train to become a psychiatrist. You know, we could probably be treated far worse than this and still be glad we're not working 20 years ago, when it was much harder, or currently doing 1 in 3 as a rural surgical registrar, or forced to undergo psychometric testing to get into Opthal, or starving in a third-world country, et cetera. What inspires me about our employers and educators is that although they could use this argument to enforce much uglier conditions upon us, they don't. Perhaps that's because society recognises that psychiatry is especially challenging, and an especially important part of society's health, which requires people with a special quality to be trained and work to treat people with mental illness. I see now that there's a reason it's called a specialty, because even in the first week of my new career, I feel special."
(Because this is a fairy tale, nobody at the table made jokes about Sam having special needs when she said this).
After dinner, everyone was feeling so well-treated and stimulated, they all agreed that they wanted to contribute to psychiatry as much as they could, as soon as they could, so they all went home and read journals of psychiatry until their eyelids grew heavy, whereupon they fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. If they dreamt, it was of a career in the public mental health system, with great and fulfilling involvement in clinical, academic and administrative arenas.
THE END.