START OF BST 1
START OF BST I
Back to Bureaucracy
During my gap year, I slowly started to let go of all the expectations I had set for myself and allowed myself the luxury of changing my mind.
That’s how I came to the decision of becoming an emergency doctor – a role that would reconcile my love for medicine with my desire to explore the world. It wasn’t an easy choice. It was months and months of back and forth, trying to make sense of how I felt about giving up a lifelong dream for a newfound passion. Somehow, some way, I came to a decision.
But that decision wasn’t really mine to make. Having chosen the surgical training post as my first preference, I was duly informed by the hospital’s HR department that I wouldn’t be able to switch into my second preference – emergency medicine – despite having ranked exceptionally well in both specialties. The Marius who had returned from a gap year that taught him how to be free and happy was suddenly flung right back into the world of bureaucracy and stress. It took months of endless arguing and pleading to make my case, though it all seemed to be in vain.
It started with them telling me I simply couldn’t switch training programmes based on a “whim” (because that’s what different career aspirations are often reduced to). Then it was me insisting that my services would be better spent working in a severely understaffed department (unlike other oversaturated departments). Then it was several ED consultants backing me up (still powerless against a single CMO). Then it was me telling them I had consulted a lawyer and that nowhere in the application process did it state you couldn’t choose your second preference (still a lost cause).
When I heard about other applicants who had managed to switch, it quickly dawned on me that this was all about politics and connections – and I seemed to have neither. To that end, I told them I would withdraw my application. I already had a cushy job I could rely on at a private hospital, and by then my mind had been made up – I no longer wanted to become a surgeon, and I was certainly not gonna be forced into it.
That, apparently, was the catalyst I had needed from the very start. The second I made that call, the ball started rolling, and they informed me they would reconsider my request. About damn time.
Onboarding Chaos
You’d think being offered the job after having to jump through so many hoops would be it. Well, you, my friend, would be very wrong.
My acceptance came with a few caveats. First off, I had to undergo a pre-employment medical – a very simple procedure were it not for the fact that it had to be done over two appointments (requiring me to take two days off work). Then I had to sort through all kinds of hospital bureaucratic BS to reclaim my access card, my parking permit, and most important of all, access to the IT system.
Knowing fully well how long that would take given the inefficiency of the hospital’s HR department, I walked in already resigned. The second I stepped in, I was met with the raucous noise of staff shouting and cursing, with one of them bursting out of the office crying and another chasing after her yelling, “You deserve better than him!!!”. Not to sound like a jackass, but imagine going from working in a private, high-end hospital where everyone is calm and composed to a public, run-down one where drama and vulgarity are the order of the day.
Just when it seemed like I had my work cut out for me, I was invited to attend a series of government meetings for external applicants becoming public officers. Turns out, being away for a year is basically the same as having never worked in the system before. Thankfully, these meetings were online. Unthankfully, I was stuck in a virtual room with a few dozen people more interested in passing crass and inane comments than paying attention to the equally eye-gouging lecture delivered by a government worker attempting to explain things in the worst English I’ve ever heard. To quote her: “The patient… He don’t care how much degrees you have, how much skills you have – he don’t care. He care that you care!” Quite ironic that this Maltese TikTok reel went viral only a few weeks before.
So anyways – the emergency department. One that’s constantly haemorrhaging medics. One that’s known to burn out even the most valiant physicians. One that’s losing doctors faster than it can replace them. And I had to go through all that to get in. But to achieve my new goal, that’s what it would take. So I stood my ground. I fought, I persevered, and finally I managed. And that is the overly convoluted, unnecessarily long, and weary path that led to me starting this new journey.