2 weeks.

Disclaimer: In light of the outcome of this afternoon's NFL NFC Championship game, my post may be slightly more melancholy than would otherwise be expected. But I'll get over it.  

I've survived two weeks. 80 hours of life in the real world. Facility tours, supervisor meetings, crash courses in computer systems, introductions to coworkers and colleagues; paperwork, shadowing orthopedic surgeons, competency examinations, and seeing a grand total of five patients - all while pretending I know what I'm doing and hoping no one suspects otherwise.

I'm exhausted. 

A gap of 7 months since my last experience in an outpatient clinic setting left me more rusty than I had anticipated. Though my schedule was anticipated to be 25-50% patient care, all care was pushed to the end of the week, and I ended up with a 75% caseload - not terrible by any stretch, but just enough to make me feel lumbering and clumsy and incredibly slow. 

And then there's the oopsies: the misunderstanding (or complete blackout; who knows for sure) that led me to leave my competency examination folder in my supervisor's office, which she later brought to me and placed on the desk immediately beside me - and still, I left it there. The ill-informed use of a possibly malfunctioning electrical stimulation unit on not one, but two patients (granted, I didn't know of the unit's history). The inexplicable ability to break my name tag, spend 45 minutes with a needle-nose pliers and a purple rubberband attempting to fix it, and ultimately losing a piece so that I have to safety pin the tag to myself. The assumption that a sign-on bonus would materialize soon after starting work, rather than after a month. The understanding that biweekly paychecks come after two weeks, when in reality they come after four.*

(*Don't worry, I had willing and ready benefactors, but I was stubborn and wanted to do the whole independent thing... I've eaten a lot of the same three meals these past two weeks. Ask me how I feel about burritos, sandwiches, and cauliflower soup.)

I've asked a million questions, and contemplated a billion more. How do I clock in? When and where should I be today, and tomorrow, and after that? Which insurance authorizes what? Where is the ultrasound gel? What is this test for? How do I read the patient's chart? Where should I put my charges? Where should I sit? Can I eat now?

I try to spread the questions evenly between all the staff, in order to keep patiences with all of them, but...

What scares me the most is when I have questions about patient treatment: the one thing I should know how to do. The one thing that directly impacts an individual's quality of life. The one area in which I feel guilty for pretending I know exactly what I'm doing when all I have is an inkling.

I don't know exactly what I'm doing.

But I have a pretty good idea of where to start.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm constantly reminding myself that I don't have to have all the answers, that asking the right questions is more valuable than pretending to be all-knowledgeable. That mistakes aren't earth-shattering - they're room for improvement. That the best way to get to "great" is to first be "good" (and, if necessary, one can stop by "sufficient" on the way). That I've only been learning on the job for two weeks, and I've got another 40+ years to go.

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill

This rookie has taken up her PT pom poms, and is ready to tackle another slew of failures and list of questions.
I'm off to Week 3, and I've taken a double dose of enthusiasm.

:D