WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT DURING INTERNSHIP?

“Complete medical school… go on to complete internship, then you shall be on a course to a great path.” Such nice words should stick and like those before us, we get to see the results immediately. Such, was the earnest comprehension of what the medical field offered six years ago. Six years, life was simple. It was a routine like now, only then I did not have to worry about what followed. I just had to read for the exams when the period was ripe. During those innocent years, even what you read was literally that and may be a little bit more. I dreamt of graduation like it was the world to be. No idea that graduation would come and all I would think of is when does all this end. Being a medical student meant your friends called you “musawo” and you swayed your head in that direction with a bit of gait.

It is now almost a year since internship begun and so the end is nay. Even if I have been weathered, battered and drained to an oasis, I am actually not bothered by being told how much weight I have lost (I wonder at how much I actually had). Yet again, I am confused by the dimorphic feelings of this period. May be it was that period when I felt hopeless with a client or that one euphoric time, when by doing something a life was saved. But if you asked me if I would do internship all over again; may be in a different setting I would be maniac to affirm to that. Life is as it is, one stage ends and another begins. Basically, you move one and get going.

There is so such to look back at and in equal measure a lot to forget. The beauty of it, is that this fast paced one year has the good, the bad and the ugly in proportionate quantities depending on whatever your priority is or will be. It is the heart beat of anyone’s medical career or may be not but it serves a lot to lay a foundation on how someone might follow up their career progress. So, do not despair, the love in war stories have such a nice ring to an end; they end.

The good, the bad and ugly of this period is that it is one year; one year of a lot of activity to last you a lifetime. You might see certain conditions once (one example in my case twice- Varicella pneumonia aka chicken pox) in your lifetime and others so frequent dust could not settle on the knowledge.

At the final bend, one asks oneself the same question asked to graduands; “what next?” at almost all corners, rumor mills spin about the latest on the job mart and study opportunities. Whatever your options might, the GPS of your internship could actually be fulcrum to that decision. For those joining, keep your wish lists short and expectations without reservations. For those who are this end with me, the ship is about to set sail.