Rant

Summer...a time of relaxation and recuperation from a tough semester. Or not. I had been really really hoping I wouldn't get called in on Sunday, since I didn't realize until Friday afternoon that I was going to be on call, and I hadn't spent time learning to be a surgery tech since before exams. 

And let's face it, I never really got a good chunk of training any time over the semester. Pretty much ever since the second week after being hired I've known this was not what I wanted to do, though I'll blame it on the stunning lack of any training program for student surgery techs. How much training do real surgery techs get? I'm sure it's more than "whenever you have a spare moment to be in the clinic." Not to mention "Don't worry, you'll learn it on the job this summer."

Ideally I should have been smart enough to not sign up so quickly and willingly, or at least, in that second week, to have returned to the person who hired me and said, "Look, I didn't fully understand what the job entailed, I have significantly more time committed to labs for class than your other student workers, is there a way to work this out?"

Actually, truly ideally they would give you a chance to shadow someone for a full shift before even hiring, so that they get a student who wants to work there, rather than someone who has been told "It's such a terrific opportunity, it's really easy, all you have to do is [simple, minor time commitment]." And then have a trainee manual, which has all of the relevant information for the job (like, on which one of the multitude of calendars you are supposed to put your on-call contact info, and where to find keys for the supply room).  

What sparked this off was me getting called in on Sunday and being an incompetent idiot. I don't like being an incompetent idiot, even when another student charitably comes in and takes over. I didn't know even how to open the supply room to get the surgery supplies, so it was assumed I don't know how to set up for surgery. Throughout the surgery I found other ways to screw up. At least I knew how to clean the room afterward. Then we were called in again, an hour later, adding up to 8 hours of frustrated efforts to be competent.

Unfortunately I'm the sort of person who generally ascribes all problems to her own failings, so most of the semester I was thinking, "I just need to work harder, it's my fault I'm having so much trouble." Add in lack of people skills and confidence to use them (I've been working on that), which makes asking for help that much more difficult. So it was my own fault I didn't speak up to the (extremely unsympathetic) student in charge of scheduling, my own fault I didn't learn everything I needed to know on the job, and my own fault I was having so much trouble with classes that I was spending a lot of afternoons trying to keep up with school rather than learning how to do a job where I was told "Don't worry, you'll learn it this summer." Well, it turns out I am  learning it this summer, the hard way, inconveniencing other people and really stressing out myself.

As a communications major, it astonishes me that the OR of a well-respected clinic has such a dearth of training policy that an inept student remains inept for so long, and then is expected to know everything they need to when the learning of it is left entirely to chance and the assumed tenacity of the student. There is no manual to refer to, there is no effort made to introduce the student to the job. I did not know that veterinary surgery endorsed the discovery learning method.