Hey guys. I'm Siobhan, a first year medical resident. Today is all about answering your questions.
I love reading your comments, some of them make me laugh, others
make me have to stop and think about the medical field and reflect on it. And to really show my appreciation,
I'm going to start adding in a Q&A with a featured question
and then answer it at the end of all my future
videos. Just to let you guys know that I'm reading your comments and then you won't have to wait until the next Q&A.
Okay, so let's get started.
Val is asking: Why don't you drive?
So I used to drive and it's really something new this year for me actually, so
now I'm taking the bus, I'm biking when it's good weather and often if I'm running late in the morning,
I'll take an uber or if it's raining or something.
But for me I find it keeps me more active, I don't have to find parking and actually if I was crunching the numbers,
it's cheaper for me as well.
Next Broadway Babe is asking: Do you have any interest beside your work and violin? Okay, so clearly you guys mostly
see work and violin, but yes, I have. I definitely have other interests, I love being active.
I think it's fun to be active when you're doing something, so I like obstacle runs, things like mud hero.
We've got some stairs in town and I love to go up running up and down them
and I really love traveling. You get a good four weeks in residency to travel, my big trip after
graduating medical school was going to Asia with 2 of my close friends, so that was amazing. We went to
Thailand and then China, we walked the Great Wall. I also
grew up in a family that loves to do these long-distance hikes and so that's a huge passion of mine now.
We've actually hiked all the way across Spain.
Seriously, we hiked all the way across Spain and we had to do it in two weeks chunks.
So we did two weeks and two weeks. And so it took about a month to hike all the way with everything on your back.
It's an
incredible way to experience a country, get to see the food, meet the people and then you're active, you're outdoors the whole time.
So it's really cool.
So Alana is asking: What's your favorite meal to eat when you're off?
So I would say that if we're going out for meal, I love getting Thai curries.
Just cuz I don't make it my home, so it feels like a treat. But the real treat for me
I really love to have is cookie dough and I'm a bit of a cookie monster.
And this stuff is so good and it must be good for you because it's organic, right?!
Okay, so this one I've been getting a lot and I've been seeing that you guys have been guessing my age.
So I'm 27 years old and
yes, patients definitely wil ask how old I am or ask if I'm too young to be a doctor.
But you know, you laugh it off.
Kaley is asking: What's the craziest thing you've witnessed in the hospital?
So I would say in medical school that was when I was shadowing a cardiac surgeon and
you see someone's chest opened up and you're actually looking at their heart.
And
then I actually had my hand in someone's chest, I could feel their heart beating as I was stabilizing that heart. To me
that was... That's something out of Grey's Anatomy, there you go. It was crazy and but of course I'm not a surgeon,
I don't do that on a daily basis. And as a resident right now on internal medicine,
I'd say one of the crazier things is called putting it an intraosseous line. So that's basically when someone is very sick and
their veins have all collapsed
and you can't actually get an IV in, that we can actually drill into someone's shin or
sort of into their arm here
and you can just pump in fluid and that's one of those ways you can really save someone's life quickly.
But it's really crazy, because it's basically working with a power drill, so it looks... It looks pretty crazy.
So Clifford is asking: If you had to choose a different residency path, what would it be? I would probably say either
obstetrics gynecology,
because I love women's health
or
something like family medicine,
which is really broad and you get a chance to make those relationships with patients that lasts over a lifetime
and I think that's really special.
So Snow Alec is asking: Do you still have time to play the violin with all your shifts?
Yes, I definitely do have the time. I do still play, but
to be honest, it's a strange thing when you go from something that used to be your work,
so it was it was the thing that you didn't want to procrastinate.
It's the thing that you had to do, like studying for me was practicing the violin.
And to go from that to
turning into my hobby and this thing that I'm doing for fun and enjoyment has actually been a bit of a challenge.
But it really really helps when I have concerts or things coming up, because then I practice more and I always love when I'm playing.
So Joyfish is asking: What inspired you to vlog about residency?
Partly it's for me, that I've never really been good at writing journals.
I've tried to so hard, but for whatever reason actually talking about experiences
I'm much more likely to actually do it. So I love talking on the phone if something happens
and so I found it really easy to talk to you guys about experiences in residency. And
the other part is that there's something
sort of hidden about the medical world.
There's not a lot that the public gets to see and
so I want to try to demystify it and there's so many things that I've learned throughout medical school and residency
that I wish I'd known before and that are just so amazing, so I wanted to bring that to you guys.
So Emi is asking: What province do you live in? That's from a fellow Canadian.
So I live in Ontario and that's right in between
Quebec on one side and Manitoba on the other and I was actually born that in Manitoba, in Winnipeg.
So Emmco is asking: What's your favorite color? Purple! Purple is definitely my favorite color.
And I've noticed that all my jackets or at least the fall
jackets are all purple and so are my shoes that I wear on call. So I think it's become... I need to branch out soon.
So Roque wants to know: If you weren't a doctor, what profession would you like to be doing?
So I guess the obvious answer is violin, because I was a violinist before.
But I can also say pro tennis player, but then I wouldn't actually be good at tennis.
I love playing, but definitely don't have those kind of skills.
So Sarah Rose is asking: What happens when you get sick, like more than just a little cold.
So doctors are the worst patients.
They often don't want to take care of themselves in their health, but I really believe that
it's incredibly important to be your best self for your patients, but also so that you don't make your patient sick.
So definitely I've stayed home in the past and
I think no one gets upset with you. People are supportive, they understand that people get sick.
This is what we deal with, sick patients all the time, we've got to be compassionate to ourselves as well.
So Tina wants to know: Have you ever been squeamish and how do you get over it?
I don't know if it counts as squeamish, but I find it difficult
watching when patients are in pain, especially when we are inflicting the pain.
And I'm sure that's probably normal for a lot of people, but in medical school
I find myself pulling at my jacket or curling up my hands, because I found it tough. An example of that would be
getting bone marrow aspirations. So basically you've got to drill down into someone's bone and you're sucking out some of the marrow,
and that's incredibly uncomfortable for them.
But the way that I got over that, as much as you can or as that I can manage it
I should say, is that you think about why you're doing this and
why it's so important for that patient. So in these scenarios often
we're trying to figure out if someone has cancer. And if they did for instance,
you could save their life with a treatment.
So it's so important to get that information. I think if you focus on that rather than all the pain,
then you can be really doing the best service you can for that patient.
Man, so many good questions. So next question here is: How do you deal with self doubts if
at all as you transition from medical school to residency?
So definitely there's self doubt, absolutely. It's such a big transition and you still feel it all the time and I've come to realize
that is a good thing. So when you have self doubt, it
helps you figure out where your boundaries are. How much do you know? When you are you starting to get into a territory
where you're not as comfortable and need to ask for help?
So partly it's a safety thing. I think it's your body giving you a warning sign. It can also be really motivating, because it makes
you want to study. And then I guess the other part is that it's actually normal.
It's really normal, because we care and wanna be our best self.
So reaching out and talking to friends and learning that they're all feeling the same way
sorta takes away some of that stigma that you've got to be perfect, you gotta have all the answers,
but instead makes you realise that it's normal, that residents are still in a learning phase and that's why we have supervisors.
So it's normal to feel that way and you will work through that.
So Abbycat is asking: Tell us about your family. Any siblings?
So maybe a really cool thing about my family is that we have a really diverse background,
so I've got family all across the world. So my dad, in terms of his heritage, is half German and half Polish.
Whereas my mom is half Indian and half Irish.
So it's been really cool to be able to travel and meet family and cousins everywhere. So recently
a couple years ago, I was in India
and I had it the chance to meet all these cousins from Bangalore. Really so exciting to feel connected to people across the world.
So Pug Mom is asking: What shampoo/ conditioner/ hair product
do you use? Your hair always looks so great, even after 24 hours. So that's so sweet, because sometimes
I think it looks like a total mess, especially when I wake up
from a nap. Let me see, let me go and grab what I get.
Okay, so I don't do anything too special.
This is the shampoo that I use.
It's bed head and I just use the regular shampoo and conditioner, but I think the trick for
long hair anyway is this. So I use the Moroccan oil and I don't think there is anything special about the brand.
I'm not being sponsored by anyone.
It's just what I use and I put it on when my hair is wet, because honestly otherwise
I can't even brush my hair when I get out of the shower, so there's all tangles in it. So this sort of fixes everything.
That's what I use.
Okay, so last question.
Battleborn is asking: What if you can't read another doctor's handwriting that's on the patient's chart. Oh my gosh.
Yes, that does happen sometimes,
it's super frustrating. Right now a lot of hospitals are moving towards
like an electronic system, so that won't be as much of an issue in the future, but it still happens.
Last time that happened to me,
you just hope that you can actually read the doctor's name. And that point
I usually just page them or call them and ask them to clarify what they were saying in there, in the document.
And really people have no problem with it.
But I
think if it's someone who's a lot more senior to you, then sometimes it feels a little bit awkward to call them up.
But it's never stopped me so far.
Well, thank you guys so much for watching and thank you for contributing such awesome comments.
This was just a little bit of so many comments that are out there.
I do read all of them as they pop up on my phone during the day.
But because I'm sort of out of doing things, I'm really struggling to answer all of them.
Just know that I'm hearing you. For all of you in the U.S. right now, have an awesome wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!
Fun fact is that
Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October. So I've already been stuffed with Turkey last month. So bye for now and I will chat with you guys later.