Being a surgical house officer

Prioritise

As a house officer you will be faced with many different tasks at the same time. Learn to prioritise. Patients who have just had an operation should be reviewed before carrying out routine tasks, such as filing, and urgent investigations for sick patients should be organised before less pressing ones. Don't be hassled into just working through your list of tasks without giving them some thought--a minute or two spent organising which are urgent and which are not is time well spent.

Communicate

You are working as part of a team, and your job will be more effective and satisfying if you communicate with others, both in your surgical team and in other specialties. It also makes for much safer patient management. If you are unsure of something, ask. No one wants you to be a hero, and your seniors will not thank you for struggling on alone if the patient has been mismanaged. If you asked to organise urgent investigations on a sick patient do not just drop the request card into the tray for the porters to pick up--it may languish in the internal mail for days. Telephone the relevant person and discuss the patient.

Always keep the patients fully informed of the investigations they are going to have and when, and ensure that you or a more senior member of the team discusses the results with them. It is amazing how many patients are trundled off for tests without having been told that they are having them. Many are also not told of the results, with the junior house officer assuming that a normal test means that it can be ignored. If you were wheeled off for an ultrasound scan you would want to know …