Season of Longing

Everyday when I step into the wards, my heart turns very heavy. I can't help but sigh. Sometimes, I really wish I can be on a long-term MC so that I don't need to face the score.

By right, I should be on cloud nine now that my pre-reg is over. I do not need to work my lungs and hearts out for project and tests anymore, and I do not need to stay back almost everyday until 9pm to clear many many outstanding stuffs.

But things also can go by left. :( And it is quite a moron to think the left- way because the thought itself is moron-ic.

I am darn afraid. Because now my name tag writes "Pharmacist", no longer the "Pre-reg Pharmacist" that once gave you the exclusive rights to "Don't know this and don't know that". Now, I can sign on prescriptions and I do not need a registered pharmacist to counter-sign anymore. Previously, I am the 2nd last barrier before a medicine reach the patient but now I am the last and final barrier. If things go past my hands, and go wrong, it's a medication error.

To sum it all, it's responsibility. I feel a heightened sense of responsibility now. :( :(

This is when you feel like going back to pre-reg all over again.

I actually brought a heavy heart when I came back to AH last Tuesday. That day was my very first day working as a pharmacist. An inpatient pharmacist. Honestly, inpatient is the only place I have always wanted to be, but when I am really getting it ...

For the whole of last week, I kept asking myself - Do I fit to be an inpatient pharmacist? Actually, my mind went blank when I see the number of beds I have to deal with. For each patient's medication record that I put before me, I have a burning desire to want to do something for that particular patient, but my mind just stopped thinking. Rather, I can't think of anything. Suddenly, I feel so ashamed of myself. Perhaps they should choose other people to be the inpatient pharmacist, I have so little to offer. Even when you said I have 0.00001% higher clinical knowledge than my peers, I think I now have -999999% lower.

First time checking discharges on my own. I was in great fear when I was putting down my signature there as a checker. I got a feeling that someday in future, it will come back and haunt me with some kind of errors and disasters translated to the patients.

Gosh, this is so diminishing.

God, am I up to it?

I have nothing to offer my patients, and doctors. :(

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..

So this was me for the whole of last week. The same thread of thoughts kept playing in my mind like an auto-re-winded radiotape.

But I am really getting better now.

I asked God the same question when I stepped into the ward today.

"What can I do for my patients God?"

"What if something wrong happened and I didn't notice or worse still, I didn't even know that it's wrong because I have pathetically NEGATIVE clinical knowledge and skills?"

"What if I really really screw things up and give the nurse wrong dilution and drug infusion rate and my patient die stat or worse still, slip into permanent morbid status?"

But more vividly than last week, I heard some voices telling me a lot more.

Yes I have to be here.

And yes, I do not know everything now but it's the something that I have which God can use to its maximum potential.

And and yes, I may make error and I will definitely make error. But I do not do it intentionally and if it REALLY really happens, it's a learning point for me, an avenue of growth for me.

And yes, because God loves me and has arranged for me to be an inpatient pharmacist, I am therefore the most suitable person to be here and whatever things that happen now and forever are not to destroy me but to groom me to be a better person, as long as I face God in all that I do.

And why do I worry so much about endangering my patients' lives when I have committed them into His hands, whose wisdom and foresight are greater than mine?

Such a paranoid right?

I know.

Couldn't help it.

Shall end with an old hymn that reminds me about the little me and bigger Him:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.