On my last day of prac today, I gave a patient a depot injection. Depot injections are injections of slow release medication into a deep muscle. A major benefit of depots is that it increases medication compliance, as the patient can go in to receive their depot biweekly or monthly, depending on the type of medication.
A lot of people receiving treatment in the community do not comply with daily medications, so depots are a good alternative. It also makes it easier for fly-in fly-out workers, as they won't have to declare medications each time they fly. I've never given a depot before and I was scared of hurting the patient, but luckily they were so helpful and were very encouraging throughout the whole procedure. My biggest advice to anyone doing anything new for the first time is just to breathe and fake confidence. Kind of make sure you know what you're doing too, but if you look confident then it'll help the other person feel better too :) So I don't have any photos to share with you guys today, but I did want to share with you one of my favourite songs from Jay Z's new album Magna Carta...Holy Grail. I'm a huge fan of Jay-Z and I really like this album. The song Holy Grail featuring Justin Timberlake is the first track on the album. My favourite bit is:
I started my first day of clinical placement at Graylands Hospital today. Graylands is Western Australia's largest psychiatric hospital. Based on what I've heard from other people, I've always believed that it is a very intense psychiatric hospital. I've had all these ideas in my head about what the place could be like, and because of this I had no real idea of what to expect.
However, after going there today, I can tell you that the grounds are very lovely and spacious and the hospital is not as scary as I thought. I didn't ever feel unsafe while I was on the wards today. I'm looking forward to seeing how this prac placement goes. I hope I gain a lot of knowledge and experience that I can take with me into med and for the rest of my career. On a side note, I read the latest post from one of my favourite blogs Marc and Angel Hack Life. The post was titled 8 Life Quotes and Tips to Make You Think. While I always gain so much from reading their posts, I thought I might share with you something that resonated profoundly with me in today's post. On the topic of happiness and personal growth, Angel wrote "The feelings of happiness and fulfillment are nice when they happen, and they are needed, but they don’t strengthen you."
When I took a moment to ponder this, I realised that this statement was very true for me. Happy times are great. I love experiencing happiness and look forward to this more than hard times and challenges, but there has never been a time which I can recall where I have built strength from a happy moment in my life.
All my happy moments have just been there for me to enjoy and have resulted in lasting memories, but It has been the challenges in life that have made me strong. It is sad but true admitting to the fact that life needs both the good and the bad. It is something I've accepted for a long time now, but reading this just made me think about it in a whole different way.
I don't always like facing life's challenges, but if it will help me to be a stronger person, I know it will always be worth it.
