Estoy estresada.

Stress levels running a bit more piqued than usual at the hospital. The regular underlying daily stress that comes with the job. Drowning in the looming ABSITE exam coming up in a week. All stirred up with the threat that our program could be closing.

Program site visit was today. Representative of the ACGME came and interviewed us all. This was brought on by anonymous poor resident driven surveys and reviews completed about a year ago. I had a very hard time being stressed by the knowledge of this site visit. Worse case scenario, and our program was closed, well we'd figure it out if it came to that. But in the meantime, I've got surgery to learn. On the other hand, the administration spent the last few months scrambling to achieve strict adherence to all ACGME rules and make sure that we (us residents) were all happy and well practiced in how to appropriately respond to all possible questions we could be asked. I could not hide how little effort I lent the cause. They even had a mock site visit a couple weeks ago. I ended up being late, because I was finishing up a case in the OR. My program director actually came into the OR and escorted me out to get me to go to the mock-site visit. Later that day as I was scrubbing on a gallbladder with him he asked me if I thought the mock-site visit had been helpful. I shot him a look from across our patient, and he shook his head, "I know, I know, you don't like these things."  I will say, I at least, mustered the respect today to wear my white coat. They sent us a dress code for the meeting, business casual and/or white coat. My new white coat that the program bought for us. My name embroidered on it and all. Never before been worn, I wore it today. As little care as I say that I have for the cause... I really don't want them to shut us down.

As part of our ABSITE crunch time a few of the attendings have been volunteering their time to have extra study sessions with us in the late evenings. We've been calling it ABSITE boot camp.
This evening one of our vascular attendings went over questions/topics in vascular surgery.

 

Just in case you couldn't see him in the first picture...

He spent the entire 90 minutes stretched out on two chairs as pictured above. It's the crazy little idiosyncrasies of our Attendings like these that get imitated by residents when they are long past exhausted, and hungry and borderline delirious.  They resort to laughter to prevent the alternative. They use laughter to connect and relate and remind each other that we are in this together, that there is a bigger picture and we are still worthwhile.

Now back to studying.
Much Love.

I've been alternating my background study music a lot. Trying to aid my efforts to stay up even later and get up even earlier to study more.  It's helped... kind of. But I did like this cover, thought I'd share just for fun.