After a certain age, your parents slowly become your children. They ask simple questions, repeat stories, and depend on your patience the way you once depended on theirs. Very few understand this role reversal.What looks like innocence or inconvenience is really time coming full circle. Don't correct them harshly. Don't rush them. Care for them the way they once protected you. This is not a burden. It is repayment.
Residency tip:
Your Relationship With Nurses/Technicians Will Make or Break Your Residency
This doesn't get said enough, and it applies whether you're on the ward, in the lab, or running a clinic. The people around you - nurses, lab technicians, radiology techs, pharmacists, the person managing the sample collection desk - they've watched batch after batch of residents rotate through. They've quietly figured out which ones are worth helping and which ones aren't.
They know things your attendings don't. The ward nurse knows which patient looks off before the vitals confirm it. The lab tech knows why that result is delayed and how to actually move it faster. The radiology technician caught something during positioning that never made it into the report. That information is available to you - but only if you've bothered to build the relationship.
Introduce yourself on day one. Not just to the seniors and consultants. To everyone! Remember names. Say thank you like you mean it, because you should. When a nurse calls you at 2am about a patient you think is stable, don't sigh into the phone. Listen. Ask what's worrying them. When a lab tech flags something that feels routine to you, don't brush it off. They're pattern -recognizing too, just differently.
The residents who treat support staff as background noise are missing half of what's actually happening around them. The ones who build genuine respect - not performed niceness, actual rapport - get called earlier when something's wrong and move through training with far less friction.
Build those relationships early. They will save your patients. And on the nights when everything is going wrong at once, they'll save you too.
Call for residency applicants!
RizalMed's Department of ORL-HNS is the DOH-designated Ears, Nose, Throat Care Specialty Center for Metro Manila.
Be part of our family!
For inquiries, please contact:
Dr. James Daniel A. Corpuz
0998-968-0081
[email protected]