What advice would you give someone entering their 20s? I mean generally about life (+med if you want but you've got a lot of posts on tips for doctors anyway). I'm 20 and am studying medicine at the moment and I feel like you have a lot of wisdom to share :)
Well, life advice is a very personal thing; what suits each of us is quite different. So I don’t know if what I might suggest would suit everyone, but here’s some tips…
Interpersonally:
You will have many friends. Right now, you may feel the people you know are all you will ever know, but that’s not true. I’ve met 70 year old patients who told me they are inseperable from friends they met at their partner’s funeral.
It’s acually pretty amazing that you can make close friends at any age.
Keeping in contact with friends and family gets a lot trickier when you leave school. People drift off to live and work in different places, they get married or have children, or they just have a job that takes a lot out of them. Understand that your relationship, and how you hang out, can change as your life evolves. If your friend is busy, it’s totally not a slight against you.
It’s worth trying to make an effort to keep in touch with people you care about. You miss them, they miss you. If they bring joy into your life, then make an effort to catch up every once in a while.
Don’t beat yourself up if that doesn’t happen. As I said above, everyone is busy.
But you may find you drift apart from some people you were close with before, and that’s OK too. It happens; perhaps you are all busy, or life takes you in different directions. You might be less close with some people, but you’ll become closer with others.
Relationships aren’t everything; perhaps they aren’t important to you at all. If they are something you value, try to make time for them when you can. Life is busy, and if you’re too focused on everything else, you might not get what you want out of it.
Sometimes things just don’t work out. This isn’t failure, it’s just life.
It hurts to be honest with ourselves, but if something doesn’t work out, or if there’s an issue, reflect on what you may want to do differently next time. Don’t wallow in guilt, but don’t ignore if you did something wrong, or you might make the same mistake again.
If someone loves you, they will work with you to make things work as best as they can. It may not be enough, but it’s important to surround yourself with people who care enough to try.
People change, or we find out more about how they are. The person they were in the past may not be enough to justify their remaining in your present. You will know if that time has come.
Don’t risk your future on account of your past; move on.
You deserve people in your life who make you happy.
Life:
Uncluttering your environment can really help unclutter your mind. You absolutely don’t have to keep things spotless, but when you can take care of business at home, it can really make you feel better.
Keep on top of your finances, and do them as you go along during the year. Spreadsheets are a godsend when it comes to budgeting, and you can make them do lots of nifty things like adding and subtracting everything for you. Save money when you can.
Keep all your payslips. Just trust me on this one.
If you are unsure what to do, whether at work or when dealing with the Grownup Stuff, there is almost always someone whose job it is to walk you through it. Contact someone; even if it’s the wrong person, they can put you through to the right one. Be tenacious; you will get through in the end.
No matter how tired you are, eat a meal if you are due a meal. You don’t have to eat a perfect diet, but you should try to get some vitamins now and again.
Self care is important. Even the little things can make you feel more human when you are truly at the end of your tether.
If you are struggling, talk to someone. Rant, cry, tell someone your fears. It makes a difference.
Look after those around you. Keep an eye on how they are doing, and if you think they may be struggling, lend a hand and ask them how it’s going. Sometimes people need to know it’s OK to not be OK.
Take your health seriously. No matter how inconvenient it is, check up on anything worrying.
Try something new every once in a while. It doesn’t matter if you feel a bit silly, you’ll get over that. You’ll be surprised how many awesome things you haven’t discovered yet!
As long as you are doing what you love, and what you want to, then the passage of time will never feel like a waste.
If you are stuck about what to do, always think ‘what would 90 year old
me think?’. Many of the things we stress about now will be completely
insignificant further down the line. If 90 year old you would regret
spending some of the best times in your life mired in drama, then
remember your time is precious.
Medicine:
You won’t know all of medicine. Never going to happen. So please don’t beat yourself up about that. You will be working your way up gradually, but even the specialist at the top of your dream field doesn’t know everything. In fact, they’ve probably forgotten lots of the stuff that you take for granted.
Treat lunch as a job on your jobs list, it’s at least as urgent as half the stuff on there, anyway! There is almost always time for lunch; skipping lunch as a way to leave on time is a bit of a fallacy. You’ll probably still stay late anyway, so might as well do it without being hungry, cranky, dehydrated and miserable. You’ll get work done faster if you are fed.
It’s OK to not know what you want to do, whatever stage you are at in your training. What you need to do is work out what you enjoy in medicine, and what you hate. And then find out enough about the specialities to work out which ones have lots of column A, and as little as possible in column B.
It’s OK if you change your mind about medicine. Nobody ever tells you this, but it’s OK. You aren’t letting anyone down. You aren’t letting yourself down. You are being honestly, brutally true to what makes you happy, and that’s a brave, wonderful thing.
The senior nurse is almost always right. If a nurse is asking you ‘uhh… doctor, are you sure you want to do that?’ then consult a book or a colleague before doing the thing.
You will have to make many clinical decisions. But, when you are starting out, your job is to know when they are not your decision to make. Your seniors are there to give the final word on
Treat every patient like you would wish your mum to be treated. Or your granddad. If you hate both of those, imagine someone that you care deeply about you. Someone who means the world.
Being in hospital is a scary, confusing time, and your patient and their relatives may well not have had a detailed explanation of what is going on. Too often the conversations going on around them might be goinb completely over their heads.
Talk them through what has been said and done; late is better than never.
The devil is in the details. Your job is to be interested in every little thing, until you can decide it is unimportant. You have to think on your feet. But if there’s any ‘little’ thing that is niggling in the back of your head, dig deeper! It may be more important than you realise.
The most important thing is to know when it’s beyond your scope. Never be afraid to ask for help; it’s better to escalate too soon, than too late.
Got any hobbies? Interests? Things you enjoy doing? Good. Keep doing
them. That doesn’t seem like rocket science, but it can ssometimes be
immensely difficult to achieve; it’s too easy for us to get bogged down
with work or all the stressful things in our lives. Don’t trick yourself
into believing that this isn’t important; it’s a vital part of
self-care and a balanced life.
