Something like purpose

How could I have been such a fool?

It's been two months since I started feeling empty at work. It started with anger toward some bad systems at my institution. Lately, I've started feeling some resentment toward colleagues who ask for help--a bad sign--and even occasional resentment toward patients who ask for help--a worse sign. Although I usually manage it professionally, it's only a matter of time, I think to myself, before these feelings affect the way I take care of people.

The hospital has started to feel like a prison. I've been walking around the place without any joy and just doing what I do because I have to, which is not my usual style. I'm used to being tired. I'm not used to being disinterested.

Yesterday, I saw a patient in the emergency department on behalf of the consult service I'm currently rotating through. I wrote my note and did a quick literature search to answer some specific questions I had about the case. As I was putting my note in the chart, the intern on the patient's primary admitting team turned up. What do you think is going on? he asked.

A few things, I said. And then I taught him something.

I left the emergency department with a feeling I haven't felt in a long time, something like purpose. Of course, it was soon thereafter crushed by two hours of rounding with our abusive attending ("He's not abusive, he's just French," says a colleague), but the point is, there was a glimmer.

If I could work in a little teaching every day, I think it would make a difference in my job satisfaction even as, fork in hand, I face the smorgasbord of crap promised by the next three years.

I have made a note of it.