Horses, and getting back upon thereof

[ladysprite]

I love my job. I love what I do. And the biggest fear I have is not being good at it.

Monday was my surgery day. I spayed a cat, just like I've done dozens of times before. Everything went fine. Tuesday, everything was still fine. Apparently, the cat died suddenly Wednesday night.

Odds are, it wasn't anything to do with the surgery, or anything preventible. Odds are it wasn't my fault. Everyone is almost certain it wasn't my fault. Almost. But we'll never know for sure.

I've been practicing for almost a year now, and I've been doing pretty well. I haven't made any misdiagnoses, and I haven't lost any patients in surgery yet. I know I will, everyone does. I've had a few complaints, as has everyone, and I know this is normal. But I still worry, especially when they all come clustered together. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm not good enough? What if I really don't know what I'm doing, and I've just survived this far on beginner's luck and it's all running out? What if I'm a bad doctor?

I can usually swallow these whatifs, and think about the good things I've done, and the patients I have who come just to see me, and how things go well almost all the time, but sometimes it gets difficult. Today is another surgery day, and I know there's a pregnant cat to spay. I hate spaying pregnant cats even under the best circumstances - it makes me feel like a murderer. After Monday, though, my confidence is shattered. I don't know whether I should foist it off on a coworker because of my post-whatever jitters, or make sure I do it myself just to make sure I can.

I'll do it, if things fall out that way. If I don't, I'll be fine. Everything will turn out all right. I can do this. I'm not a bad doctor.

Am I?

Comments

[98.livejournal.com]

I'm not a bad doctor.

Am I?



Nope. Even assuming you started out as a bad vet student, which I do not think is the case at all, you care too much to have allowed yourself to turn into a bad doctor.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

We all die - animals, people, plants. My friends who are in medicine - human or animal - tell me this is one of the hardest things for them to deal with, but also the most necessary. I can only imagine what a fine line healers have to walk between trying their very best to heal and knowing that some patients will die, anyway

It's a terrible challenge: You have to care, and you have to try. But caring and trying - the very qualities that make good healers - doesn't mean every patient will survive. The difficulty every healer faces, I think, is to grasp that deep down, where it counts, and learn to go on, anyway. That may mean learning to establish some emotional distance for your own protection, while still maintaining the level of empathy necessary to keep on doing the work.

For what it's worth, I'm in awe of people - like you - who choose this difficult path. The fact that you can acknowledge how you feel after this experience is, I think, a sign of just how good a doctor you're becoming.

well, darnit

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I had carefully composed a reply, and I get here, and kightp has written a better one than I could have. :)

What she said, LadySprite. I know you, and you are too driven, caring, conscientious, and intelligent to be a bad doctor. If you were a human's doctor I'd go to you. :)

A.