I happened to be engaged in a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine last week. We talked about the commitment shown by interns in doing their work in our hospital. We actually compared us with the new set of interns. And we both seemed to think that the present lot is very insincere in their work and a lot less committed than we were.
We, being the perfectionist-workaholic kind, strived to do everything right during our internship. We set high standards for ourselves and kept on pushing ourselves harder to get even better. We tried being nice to the patients, greeting them and interacting with the bystanders. We tried to be like a family member of theirs, always wearing a smile and being cheerful. In return, we got a great response from our dear patients and we took pride in it.
We always used to obey our seniors and carry out all orders without even a second thought. This meant that the seniors (ie. residents) always enjoyed working with us. This too has been highlighted in their comments at the end-posting reviews. This is not to mention that we enjoyed impressing our professors with some quality work and used to get high grades on the end-posting assessments. Altogether, we were like med-geeks.
Now, two years after we have done our internship, two batches have completed theirs and the standards, at least from our point of view, are capitulating. These days the interns don’t do their ward work properly, don’t know the details about their own patients; forget the rapport-bit. They also think that preparing for the pre-PG entrance is the only thing that matters and internship is a farce. This ideology leads them to inappropriate behaviour with their residents. I could go on and on about this. But, is there a point?
I am wondering if we are being too harsh. Or maybe we are deluded by our own high held impressions about the way we did our internship. Or maybe we were the more dedicated ones from our batch and therefore, we cannot compare ourselves with the other batches. I hope one of this is true as otherwise, my dream to see the day when teaching hospitals are trusted and respected by the public will remain like it is; as a dream.
