Bitching

This post is a waste of time. Unless you have too much time to kill, don't bother reading.

Basically I just want to rant about my PBL group. They are alright generally. Just one or two people whom I wonder from time to time why the hell are they doing medicine. One of them is my clinical partner. She is lovely but she is simply not keen to learn medicine. She doesn't bother remembering patients' names and clerk patients only because Dr New said 'we must have 8 clerkings by the end of the firm' - and as soon as Dr new said it's ok to only have 2 or 3 clerkings, she went straight back home for a lay in. She doesn't want to learn anything else other than what we are suppose to know at this point. And she's often with the attitude - we've got to let our tutor see that we are doing work so we don't get marked down, then we'll be ok. Our group sort of got told off yesterday that our PBL discussion isn't up to scratch, and today in the GP surgery, she was actually reading her PBL notes rather than learning from the consultations, seeing interesting signs and symptoms from the patients and paying attention to the doctor's excellent communication skills. I mean, if you are still not mature enough to get out of this schoolchildren attitude towards learning (put on the hardworking act when the teacher sees you, and when the teacher leaves just throw away the mask), then I'm afraid medicine, especially in such self directed learning environment, isn't for you.

I always get very excited after clerking a patient, especially whose diagnosis is yet unknown, reading a lot and trying to work out if I could out what the problem is. My clinical partner and many of my groupmates just never showed any interest to discuss these queries. My clinical partner would rather discuss her cat, her boyfriend, her going home every weekend or her car insurance with our GP than asking him any medical questions. Maybe it's just me the boring medical student with nothing else to talk about other than medical topics. And none of my groupmates wants to hang around the ward to learn stuff no matter how many times I've asked them to join me. Maybe I am just too keen, bit overenthusiastic for them to cope with. I have to say, nevertheless, that having a group with this low level of motivation does hold me back a bit. I actually feel more accepted by the doctors in the ward than my group. I'm constantly reconsidering should I actually be less enthusiast.

I don't generally bitch about people. Since a few years ago when I discovered my tendency to prejudice, I take extra effort all the time to make sure I keep an open mind about people. But this is just too frustrating.