The Glorious Things Interns Do

1. Clean cupboards.
2. Bring tea, coffee, food for the senior docs.
3. Take senior doctors' family members to the dentist.
4. Basically, make senior doctors' family members feel important, show them around, do their work for them, so that your senior looks good.
5. Go to the bank and finish your seniors' work for them.
6. Fill forms. Tons and tons. Since seniors are too high and mighty to fill theirs themselves.
7. Accompany patients everywhere. Since they will otherwise get lost and some time will be wasted. An intern's time on the other hand is obviously worthless.
8. Beg all the time. For X-rays to be done, USGs to be done, investigations to be done, reports to be given, appointments to be given. Beg for syringes, needles, bulbs, gloves. Beg, haggle, fight, steal, scream, weep. Whatever it takes to get the job done quickly. (Though of course, all this should actually be getting done all by itself, as a basic requirement for any hospital to function).
9. Suck up to everyone, from the mama to the sweeper to the nurse to the resident doctors to the HOUs to the Dean.
10. Put up with flirting and ogling housies (exclusive to female interns).
11. Arrange for alcohol etc. for your residents (exclusive to male interns).
12. Trace reports. Although they should never require tracing in a fully functional hospital. 
13. Make phone calls from your cellphone for your seniors' work.
14. Scan books and textbooks for your seniors.
15. Check and tally the department's accounts for your seniors.
16. Find the X-rays or files or reports your seniors lost. 
17. Never learn a thing.
18. Never treat a patient.
19. Never question your seniors.
20. Put up with the sisters being mean to you all the time (I confess there have been occasions when they've left me close to tears with their unnecessary and uncalled for meanness).

From mkk:
21. Shoot and develop X-rays.
22. Forge prescriptions under some other Dept HOD's name.
23. Find pillow for the lecturer to rest on.
24. Help the medical instruments supplier extract money from BMC so that they get few thousand rupees of commission.
25. Take night ward rounds and write CM notes as the housemen are too busy (read lazy) to take themselves.
26. Get the tube lights fixed!
27. Renewal of medical registration.

From Tangled up...:
28. Pick up the housie's laundry and deposit it in her room.
29. Count the number of functioning and non-functioning ventilators in the ICU and write down the names of the companies as well as who donated the money needed to buy them.
30. Go to the new hospital building from the old to call the registrar because the intercom wasn't working (God forbid, they actually have to use their mobile phones!)
31. Count the number of tables and chairs in three wards.
32. Pick up lunch order from a restaurant because the restaurant had no one to deliver it.
33. Spread a bed sheet on the bed in the doctor's room in the Emergency so the lecturer can sleep on it.

All this donkey work we do isn't going to help us in any way as a doctor, or as an individual. Our seniors aren't even going to thank us for it, or acknowledge our existence once we've finished doing their work. It's just going to be time we wasted in our life. Zero benefit. The only way it helps is that they HAVE to give us the sign on the log book at the end of your posting. Since we did all their donkey work. Interns just want the sign, seniors just want their work done. So no one complains.

Some people seem to think that the PG doctors are so overworked, it's no crime if they shed some of their workload onto the interns. But I beg to differ. As PG students, they worked hard, got admission into college, and are now going to spend the next three years becoming doctors. This is a part of their deal. They're getting paid for this. It's part of their job profiles, and it will help their patients. (Yes, the very ones they actually get to treat). Their seniors will teach them, and help them in their careers, if they do their jobs well. And they better do it well! But is it really a part of an intern's job profile to do their seniors' donkey work?

As medical interns in a government hospital, we're supposed to get a hands-on experience in treating patients, and improving our medical knowledge, we're supposed to be developing skills, not doing our seniors' work for them so that their lives are easier (while they never give a thought to our lives).

Frankly, dear seniors, we don't even mind doing your donkey work, since we are the junior most in the hierarchy, but at least we should be taught something once in a while. Don't look at us like hungry leeches, with the only thought in your head when you see an intern being how to extract the most from them and get the highest amount of dumb work done from them. We've finished medical school, the least you can do is treat us with some respect. Like, maybe remember we are now your colleagues? Ever heard of the words 'please', and 'thank you'? If you're asking us to do your personal work, at least ask politely! Ever thought that you should maybe do your job once in a while which includes teaching us something? Rather than just thinking hard and inventing work for the intern every time you see one sitting ideal? Hope you get the message someday. Till then I'll just go back to living the frustrating life of an intern.

P.S. My ongoing orthopedics rotation is turning out to be a nightmare. Though this post may seem a bit extreme to some, I swear all of it is true, especially as far as this one rotation is concerned.

P.P.S. Feel free to add to my list of 'The Glorious Things Interns Do'. I will be updating the list as your comments come in.