New Job: First Day

I've been dreading this day as much as I've been excited about it.  My first day at The New Hospital.

If there's one thing I find really difficult, it's being a stranger in a strange land.  Especially when that land happens to be a place I have to prove myself worthy to inhabit.

I suppose it's about par for the course that my first patient was there for a straight-forward procedure but was not a very straight-forward patient.  And of course his IV came out.

And I guess I shouldn't feel bad that the second patient had an unexpectedly difficult airway, when apparently two other clinicians in two other rooms had the same experience this afternoon.

And finally, I can't imagine it's all that unusual to find the morass of new paperwork, new rules and rituals, and unfamiliar building lay-out utterly confusing and stressful on the first day.

This is normal, right?  This feeling that you wish all the nice, new people who welcomed you so politely and helpfully and offered their support on your first day at work could be where your old colleagues were when you left them:  aware, believing, trusting in your ability to take good care of patients and do your work reliably and with integrity?

It takes time to build that trust up.  Even at St. Boonie's there was a breaking-in period. There was judgment.  Over time it became mutual respect, even friendship in some cases.  But it did take time.  And I'm so impatient, and sometimes so...doubtful.  It's very true what that old Cheers theme song says:

"Sometimes you wanna go

where everybody knows your name

and they're always glad you came."  

I'm still excited about this new job and the possibilities it holds for me.  But I can't help missing my old village a little.