So far, most of our orientation has been “Intro To Our Department!” lectures given by nursing, pharmacy, PT/OT, etc. – which universally consist of the following slides:
- Who We Are (Names and introductions! Pager numbers!)
- What We Do (Awesome clinical things!)
- How You Are Going To Get In Our Way (You suck!)
- Why You Think It’s Okay To Get In Our Way (It’s because you suck!)
- How You Can Stop Getting In Our Way (Ask questions, be respectful, and get a degree in our field!)
- Ha Ha, Just Kidding About That Degree Thing (Not really!)
- “The End: Hang In There!” with clipart of kitten stuck in tree (Adorable!)
Seriously, someone must have sent out a mass email saying: “Hey! We need to fill some time during intern orientation. Does anyone want to save some time by yelling at the new interns before they start?”
(Either that, or it’s just a temptation no department can resist when they’re staring down the 20 bright, eager faces that will soon be exactly like every other group of 20 bright, eager interns making their July a living hell.
Which… okay, yeah, fair enough.)
Still: it’s just a little disconcerting.
There’s something at least a little darkly funny about eagerly showing up to an Introduction To Nursing Staff event (Getting to know the nurses! Yes! Hopefully they will like us!) – making small talk, settling in with a nice sandwich…
… only to be told things like “You’re not as smart as you all think you are”, “Remember, we’re a TEAM. You guys never act like we’re a TEAM.” and “At least try to fake some respect in front of the patients.”
Which… wait, what? That wasn’t us! Those previous interns aren’t in the room! We’re new interns!
Who are you yelling at? Me? My lunch?
To be fair, I guess interns actually do shit like that.
And if they’re pre-emptively yelling at us about it, I guess it must happen every year.
So despite my feeling that pre-emptive yelling isn’t exactly going to improve the ‘respect’ situation, I’ll agree that some sort of yelling is definitely going to be deserved eventually.
(But for that, all I can offer is a pre-emptive apology…)
Action Potential 
In medical school I grew to hate a teaching technique I like to call the “Merlin”:
The day you show up, they expect you to know everything about how their team, their floors, and their specialty operates.
I might have thought this was mere arrogance, but on one of my rotations the surgery fellow (of course) took me around and showed me how to use the computers, how they like their notes composed, how to put in consults, etc. On the LAST DAY OF THE ROTATION. The Merlin is real.
Im a nurse in the uk and to be honest every time we get a fresh batch of doctors we need to explain stuff. doctor shouting “why the obs not done on the new admission” well they are hiding under the bed…….