Medical Matters Pat HarroldGeorge Moore said, "every man should have a lake in his heart", which is probably true. And every doctor has a "Res" in his or her heart, however far they stray from that first hospital job.
"The Res" is the doctors' residence, a quaint term used to describe the place where junior doctors hang out, chill out and occasionally make out. It is also a refuge where you can get a cup of coffee and a sympathetic ear, and a school where you can find the answer to a 1,000 problems, most of them medical.
Any Res is like the officers' mess in a war zone. Interns, the pink-cheeked subalterns, buzz in and out clutching charts and forms. Senior house officers (known as SHOs) are the captains, groaning theatrically as their bleeps go off and calmly issuing orders down the phone.
Grizzled registrars, the majors, bend a solemn ear to their juniors and majestically scan X-rays and reports. You almost expect them to say: "Ward round at dawn, we're going over the top."
Everybody wears the uniform of a white coat, except the SHO in psychiatry, who is in mufti.
In Ireland the Res is a genteelly shabby sitting room, with a kitchen and bedrooms off-stage. Medical periodicals and textbooks lie in tottering piles. While the anaesthetic SHO, who has the reputation of being an intellectual, reads The Irish Times and the psychiatry SHO may read a book, everybody else trades gossip and information while watching television.
An unwritten law of medicine states that if you assemble some junior doctors, they quickly form into characters straight from central casting: the quiet genius, the dangerous heart-throb, the angel from heaven and, of course, the muck savage. Surgeons, for instance , when not practising the housewifely arts of stitching and making lists, are required to act in a terrifyingly assertive manner and generally end up in charge of the TV remote control.
Among the more stressful tasks of junior doctors is picking the video on weekday nights. As you scan the shelves, you mentally scan the audience and try to decide what will please them. Invariably you go for the lowest common denominator. In my day this generally meant an American violence-fest, presumably as an antidote to treating the sick. Once, in a fit of nostalgia for a time when I had a life of my own, I took out The Dead, a charming film based on a story by James Joyce. The title met with general approval, but after about 15 minutes, when nobody had been shot or blown up, everybody who could went to the pub (even the anaesthetic SHO, who pretended that he had seen it before).
The member of the domestic staff who is allocated to the Res is also a house-mother and the undisputed boss. She has seen it all before and delivers advice as she clears the teacups. She knows who will pass their exams and which relationships will last. She has her favourites and those she mistrusts, and she is always right.
The new doctors arrive with suitcases and CD players and rapidly absorb hospital gossip and traditions. You take to Res life with enthusiasm, for you will never again bond as closely with your workmates as in these early days. And you learn from your peer group and colleagues the things that matter at work, which are often very different to what you learned as a student.
As the year turns, the camaraderie of people who work together becomes evident. The vivacious paediatric SHO and the shy medical SHO become close friends.
Her boyfriend arrives for a visit. In the intimate atmosphere of the Res, she sees him in a different light and he departs early. The medical SHO, who had been despondent, now has a foolish smile on his face and a wedding will probably follow.
At Christmas, the overseas doctors nobly take the brunt of the on-call duties. Families all over Ireland are grateful. Summer arrives and everybody wears scrubs and brings the chairs outside. The paediatric registrar cooks a feast in the kitchen, softly crooning a song he learned as a child in Delhi.
Like actors in a new run of a play, different people will take on the roles and make the Res their own. After some years, the changeover of staff seems less important and you find yourself answering the questions instead of asking them.
You realise that you've outgrown the Res. You graduate to the rarefied atmosphere of the consultants' staff room, or leave hospital medicine altogether. But the Res has played a large part in making you the person and the doctor you have become, and it is now time to face the real world.
Pat Harrold is a GP with a practice in Co Tipperary.
Muiris Houston is on leave.