Becoming a preregistration house officer

Manoj Ramachandran takes an in-depth look at the difficult transition period from medical student to starting professional life as a preregistration house officer

Your final year as a medical student can be a very stressful time. Wearing a white coat, weighed down by the almost osmotic presence of the two Oxford handbooks in your pockets, you hunt in packs around the hospital wards, undeterred by the constant protests of patients prodded to the point of painful exhaustion. It doesn't really matter if they don't want to see you as you can always come back tomorrow.

You rapidly absorb information but still disbelieve your tutors when they repeatedly inform you that you currently have the greatest breadth (and sometimes depth) of knowledge that you will ever have in your career. Much of the information in your head is above and beyond what is required to pass finals comfortably. The fact that each consultant believes that in-depth knowledge of his or her own (sub) specialty is vital for finals doesn't help. You relieve the boredom of studying at weekends by joining the rest of your year at intensive revision courses, where you find yourself incessantly asking questions such as, “What have I been doing for the past five/six years?” and, “Why didn't they teach us this stuff at medical school?”