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Starting a new job can be a difficult experience, regardless of what profession you follow.

Granted, some jobs can be a bit more intimidating on the first day than others, but arriving in a new place and being thrown under the weight of all the responsibilities that you likely don’t even comprehend at that moment, is enough to make anyone wonder what the hell they are doing there.

When it comes to the responsibilities of a job, I doubt there are many careers out there that can compete with being a medical professional.

Not knowing the new accounting software on your first day as a CA is after all much more manageable than having to save a man’s penis from exploding five minutes into your first shift. Be thankful that you were better at numbers than biology in school.

Incurring a small fortune in study debt after slogging your way through medical school for almost a decade hardly ever prepares doctors for the reality of life and death in their chosen career, yet junior doctors have to start somewhere.

VICE spoke to some of these newbies, and once again I was reminded that there are worse things than sucking at maths. Welcome to the mother of all inductions.

‘Two guys in balaclavas burst into the room carrying their blood-soaked friend in their arms and shouting for help.’

For new doctor Mike, 30, the first night involved a gang of balaclava-wearing thugs bursting into the emergency room with a ‘colleague’ who had been stabbed. In the flurry of chaos that ensued they managed to stabilise the patient, but when asking for assistance, the doctor was told that the patient next to him was going into cardiac arrest after snorting the ‘wrong kind’ of cocaine at a party and that he was on his own.

“The sad thing is, a few days later the guy who’d been stabbed came in and accused us of stealing his watch. I could only think, ‘Wow.’ If only he knew how worried we were about his life. “

Orla, 29, from the UK, recalls her first patient and his wife. Shortly after starting her shift, the young doctor heard a woman screaming and when she rushed to the emergency room she found the woman standing next to her husband, who was the actual patient. A fountain of blood was spurting from the poor guy’s penis and splattered on the opposite wall of the room while everyone was freaking out.

“The wife is screaming; he’s screaming; I’m basically screaming while I just hold this man’s dick and wait for help.”

Orla’s initial shock quickly turned to action though and in her own words, she ‘launched herself at the man and grabbed his penis to try and stop the bleeding.

See what we mean? Not knowing how a ‘ledger function’ works on Sage Accounting is waaayy better than dealing with a blood-spraying penis.

For Orla, the penis incident may have been something she could smile about later, but as with many doctors who work in overcrowded public hospitals, there is mostly nothing funny about being new to the world of medicine. Most new physicians are confronted with life and death, but when it becomes their responsibility to choose who lives or dies, their chosen path becomes nightmarishly real.

“I laugh about it now but at the time it was very traumatising because I had no senior support whatsoever.”

During peak hours, doctors often oversee the treatment of hundreds of patients, and the timing of some emergencies forces them to decide who to focus on first. Saving one patient can often mean letting another die.

‘I had to make a split decision and decide which patient to save – no one tells you you’re going to play God.’

Sometimes patients die that could have been saved if there were additional resources available. These incidents leave young doctors with feelings of guilt, which could lead to depression and anxiety – a common condition among young doctors.

 ‘It’s on you. You’re not protected. If you’re the only doctor, it’s on you to make that decision.’

Being a doctor is not all about driving Porsches and having a nice holiday house in Yzerfontein, and in the first few months of holding people’s lives in your hands, the reality is a brutal wake-up call that many young professionals struggle to adapt to. It highlights the need for proper support of new entrants to the medical field and is a stark reminder that holiday houses and GMC were often paid for in terror.

And just in case you are curious about what other weirdness doctors have to deal with on a daily basis, check out this strange video on things doctors have had to remove from people. Bleh:

So be nice to your doctor the next time you see him or her. You have no idea what they had to go through to get there.

[source:vice]