Tips for Trainees
Half of what you'll learn in medical school will be shown to be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody an tell you which half- so the most important thing to learn is how to learn on your own. -David Sackett
Pearls for New Trainees
1) Learn the names of the nurses, techs, RT's, communicate with them, thank them often (for saving your butt!)
2) Don't manage sick patients on your own; come get the senior resident, fellow, attending, PICU is a team sport.
3) "Nobody woke up this morning and decided to ruin your day." Happiness is YOUR choice. Be happy, stay positive.
4) Nobody expects you to know much (yet) but we do expect you to be 100% reliable.
5) Never ever ever ever lie. IF you don't know something or didn't do something, be honest.
6) Want to get smart? 1) Read up about 1 patient each day. 2) Ask your attendings, fellows, senior residents lots of questions
7) Be humble. Do NOT be arrogant. You will be wrong many times in your career. Learn humility now.
8) Eat/hydrate during every shift
9) Never forget what a privilege it is that total strangers who don't know you ask you for your help on what is possibly the worst day of their lives.
Struggling with getting started doing something/procrastinating? Commit to doing that "productive" thing (i.e. drafting that IRB, working on that paper, reading that chapter, exercising, etc) for 5 minutes. If you want to quit after that, that's totally fine. But do it for 5 minutes.
Feeling slighted or upset by what someone said or did? Ask yourself, what is the story you are telling yourself (i.e. your mind's natural mechanism is to come up with a coherent explanation to explain the occurrence)? Then, find out if that story is actually true or not.