The “July effect” of new residents takes place in January in Australia. “It’s an oft-quoted fact that ‘complications’ increase in January, aided by the influx of nervous junior doctors who have yet to find out just how their new hospital works and where everything is. We’ve been through medical school and passed our exams, we’ve been floating around various hospitals for the past few years of our lives; but come Monday, we’ll be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

And it will all be new again. Despite our education and training, there is little preparation for the bowel-clenching sleep-menacing terror of new responsibility for an ill person’s life and wellbeing.

No longer can we hide using the ‘I’m just a medical student and can’t legally sign for anything’ ploy. Now we’re going to be responsible for dosing and choosing the morphine, the heart drugs, the anticoagulants, the antibiotics and all the 1001 other pills, capsules, injections, fluids, ointments, creams, suppositories and enemas than no human being can memorise.”

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