Today I witnessed a registrar tear strips off a colleague of mine. Scratching the surface, he wanted to do some surgery which was done by another, and was pissed about it. Colleague was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I often feel like medical students are easy targets. It’s not like we’re in the same place for very long, so it doesn’t matter if we complain and placements are short enough to think it’s fine to just grin and bear it. We all have bad days now and then, but it’s hard to be at the brunt of someone else’s mood when you already feel like you’re in the way and would like to feel a little more useful.

I wish I had been braver and said something. I’m not sure what or what the hell it would have achieved, but I hold my own more at the gym. Perhaps that’s because I feel like the gym is my territory and I have a lot of confidence about it. I still feel like an outsider in medicine. Not so much in obstetrics, but certainly general medicine and surgery.

There’s no safety word in the hospital. I wish there was.