Transition from university to hospital

Over the past few weeks, I've had to adjust to the hospital environment. Unlike at university where people can let their guard down at times, at public places in the hospital we must be prudent in our manner so that patients and doctors do not have a bad impression of us.

We are required to dress neatly, and at my clinical school, males are required to wear ties. They also like to send us txt messages to make announcements to us. So I guess they've kept up with the 21st century, unlike some primary and high schools. That reminds me of a UTAS professor who advocated for this kind of contact with high school students a few years ago. He said (paraphrased) "imagine the effect of a txt saying 'the principal wants to see you now'". Anyway, that's an aside.

Maybe our clinical school is old fashioned in some ways, but we are advised to refer to patients, other students and staff by their surname when on the wards, unless a patient told us they preferred their first name. That reminds me of a study showing that generally speaking, those who preferred to be referred to by surname rather than first name were older.

There is also the aspect of confidentiality. I am not someone who likes to talk about other people's secrets. However, for the purpose of improving our interview skills, I do have to debrief with my buddy and/or other people present at the time when I was doing the interview. During this time, we must make sure that others who were not present are not around. Another issue of confidentiality is that pulling the curtains around a bed when interviewing patients really doesn't prevent sound going through, but aside from bringing people into other rooms (which generally isn't done), we really don't do anything to stop others in the room hearing.

And finally, sometimes when I want to go from A to B quickly, I sometimes like to go down steps quickly and jump the last few steps before turning around to the next set of steps. Of course, it's not as extreme as sliding down the rails. But I was instinctively running and jumping down stairs a few days ago one or two times before realizing that maybe it wasn't such a good thing to do in a hospital as a medical student wearing a tie and having a hospital ID card.