What to expect in your first year of practice.

Every borderline personality patient will come out of the woodwork and want to be your patient. The kind things they will say, the flattery, the sob stories, oh, my, god, will they make you think you need to take them on. You do not. If they have a doctor, you are covered, so are they. Ask them to apply again in a few years when you are able to breath air again. 

You will see more cancer than you ever thought possible. The patients you are seeing either haven't seen a doctor in 20 years, or have not been followed as tightly as a new doc will. You will see the lumps and bumps that their previous physician missed, not because they are incompetent but because they are too familiar with their patient. 

The number of labs that you are ordering are going to be tsunamic. (Is that a word? It should be.) You think that you need to know everything about every patient. I sure did. I don't regret it. But it did mean that I needed significant amount of time to review it all, then do the follow up labs, investigate the things that went wrong...

You are going to want as much money as you can get as quickly as you can. I promise, it will come. Take an extra 6 months before expecting to pay down significant portions of your loans. Until then, take your time rostering patients. Taking on too many right away will make things impossibly hard and you don't need that. Taking on too many responsibilities (long term care, oncology, etc.) will put you under water too quickly. Don't do it. 

Keep in touch with friends. Everyone says to do it. No one does. Make actual dates and keep them. Spend time with people who are not your patients, employees, colleagues. Gossip about pop stars and athletes. 

Make dates for massage too. At least monthly. And with a therapist. Even if it's spent just getting to know each other initially, there will be times that you need an impartial person to call you out on your bullshit, remind you to complete your self care, to tell you whether or not this medical culture we call home is reasonable or not. They can help you will your relationships. Just get one. Seriously. 

Book all your vacations and conferences as soon as you can. Plan your whole year, don't let it get to the end of the year and you don't have time to get away. This way you can get locums if you want to cover you, get early bird deals, get the vacation you want. Use your maximum vacation and CME time. Do not use your time off to do paper work. That's not time off.

Book an hour every day that is just for you to book. You can book it in advance, the day of, or not at all and use it for napping. Spend the time the way you want to. You may not know at the beginning how you want to spend that time, but eventually you will.