How to navigate your way in the hospital
Definitions & Key takeaways
As a healthcare provider, it's essential to understand how to navigate your way in the hospital where you work. First, get to know people, and meet as many faces as you know. Knowing people you will be working with is vital and will help your work to be more efficient and collaborative. Also, remember to be humble, and acknowledge what you don't know but demonstrate the will to learn more. Finally, take a moment for yourself to take a deep breath, and refresh, especially when you've been experiencing a tough shift.
All right, how are you feeling today? Hi guys, Doctor Rishi here from osmosis.
Uh I wanna talk to you today about top three tips to navigate your way in the hospital. So uh many of you may be starting your clinical rotations and don't know, kind of how to uh be in a hospital setting and, and what is kind of expected of you and what you should expect in return.
And so I wanna talk about kind of my top three tips to survive and thrive in those first few weeks and months and, and hopefully be on that as well.
That means showing up early, staying late. Um take lunch with people if possible.
I remember in my first few weeks and months, I actually went out and very old fashioned when shook everyone's hand, you know, and said, hey, my name is Rishi.
Tell me your name, what you do and I got to meet, you know, the nursing staff. I got to meet the head nurse.
I got to meet the charge nurse. I got to meet the pharmacist.
I got to meet, you know, PTO T, uh, the folks that are actually part of the cleaning crew. You know, I actually tried to meet every face in the hospital.
Um, at least on the floor that I was on. Uh, and over time that, that became the hospital.
So you get to know people and it takes time to do that. But these become your allies.
Now, that part might be intuitive and you'll say, OK, no big deal. That's intuitive.
Here's the part that I would extend this to, I would say, get to know your patients really, really, really well. Uh not even just their medical history, get to know kind of what they're doing on weekends, how they spend their free time.
They're usually pretty bored. So they're, they're always welcoming, you know, someone that's gonna sit and talk to them.
So get to know your patients really well. Also get to know your fellow med students really well.
You know, I rotated with different med students for most of my rotations from, from my friends. I didn't know all of them very well.
Get to know them really well, you know, ask them questions, maybe spend your lunches with them, you know, try to really form a friendship because you're going through something that's new and hard and the only person that's gonna know it, the way, you know it is your your colleague, right?
And in the long term, that person that that colleague of yours that at the moment is maybe just a med student is gonna be someone that you're gonna trust is gonna have expertise in something that you're gonna need to know about.
So you're gonna probably pick up the phone one day and call them up and so you're forging those strong alliances now. So again, number one tip, spend time getting to know people.
It's so important. OK?
Tip number two, be humble. Be really, really humble.
Say, I don't know, I would practice saying that at least once or twice a day. Just say, I don't know.
I don't know. Uh if someone asks you something, you don't know the full answer, maybe you have a part answer.
Just say, you know what? I don't really know the full answer, but this is the little bit that I do know, remember that you're there to learn and don't be too scared or too proud to mention a mistake.
I remember very, very vividly. I was uh an intern.
So I was kind of uh past my, my third year and I was getting paged number of times for a certain patient. And I kept answering uh the nurse and saying, hey, I think it's OK.
I think it's OK. Turned out this patient in the, in the morning had a pleural effusion, basically fluid on the lung that went all the way up, you know, kinda to here.
And in that moment I felt, you know, totally beat faced and, and embarrassed because they had called me, they had called me a number of times and I was the one that said, no, I don't think we need a chest X ray.
And I wish we had gotten one. I wish we'd gotten three in the night.
We would have captured this pleural effusion before it got so big. And so I felt very embarrassed.
But, you know, I said, you know what II made a mistake last night, I should have gotten a chest X ray and I didn't. Um So don't be too proud to say, you don't know because I learned a lesson we had a big conversation about when you should and shouldn't get chest X rays.
And it was actually a very valuable conversation to me. So again, tip number one, spend time getting to know people.
Number two, be humble, be especially around mistakes. Tip number three, take moments to yourself.
Uh I remember my time uh navigating the wards initially felt like chaos. You know, every moment there was a fire that had to be put out.
This patient over here was extubated. That patient over there was, was dying.
This patient over here was in a lot of pain. So, you know, I'm running around uh oftentimes just trying to figure things out and trying to keep, you know, these fires at bay and there are also quiet moments when you wanna kind of gather yourself.
And so, you know, sometimes that's just walk a little slower on your way to the or uh if you're, if you're not needed there, um spend an extra minute uh in the bathroom and, and take a, a moment just to kind of quiet yourself.
If you have time, go down to the cafeteria, grab, grab a, a drink of water or grab some food. You know, these little moments that you get throughout the day are precious and they're gonna kinda fill up your cup again.
Uh The hospital can be a crazy chaotic place and it for me was so valuable uh navigating the hospital, especially in the first few weeks when I felt so out of my element to have those moments of calm and quiet.
And that was my other chance to kind of have a moment to myself, I never ever spent those moments with people. II always had that kind of zen time to myself.
So take those moments to yourself that you need to kind of recoup from the chaos that can happen in the hospital. So again, tip number one, spend time getting to know people.
Tip number two, be humble and be uh OK with kind of admitting um mistakes and tip number three, take moments to yourself.
I think it's great to start on the wars but it can be chaotic. So good luck if you're just starting out, take care.
Bye-bye. Start your free trial today at osmosis.org.
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