I'll be walking along the street, earphones in ears, beanie on head, scruffy coat with a few buttons missing on, typical student, engrossed in my own thoughts and my own music. I could be any other student, on their way to lectures or (more likely) on their way to get a coffee, to see them through a boring day.
I walk into the hospital, down the corridor, and still I could be anyone, a patient, a family member, or a member of staff. I'm completely anonymous.
Then I step into the doctors office, take off my coat, take off my earphones and enter the real world, feeling completely different. Feeling like I have a job to do, like I know where I'm going with my life, and like I can do it.
Do you remember Stars in Their Eyes? You'd get some 40-something housewife, telling you she enjoyed walking her dogs and doing watercolours in her spare time, then: "Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be Madonna," and she'd step into the smoke, and when she stepped out, all peroxide wig and plastic crucifixes and fingerless gloves, for a second, just a second, she really was.
That's how I feel.
I go in feeling like this :
And I come out feeling like this: 
(who one of the patients said I sounded like!)
And tonight, Matthew, I'm going to feel good about it :-)
2 comments:
It's good to have some confidance, it engenders a perception of competence. That aids your therapeutic relationship.
So as long as you're not so confidant you're Gregory House, confidance is better than being a wee timorous beastie.
I am glad to hear it, it is good to feel confident about your work whatever you look like, it is the experience and the knowledge you have accumulated over the years that counts.
My friend knows this really gifted interpreter who looks like a very ordinary scruffy housewife but when it comes to doing a really difficult job, her minds works so fast she finds it hard to believe herself.
Don't laugh at this, young medic, tell yoursef that if you feel you can do the job it is because you CAN.
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