Crushing

I suppose starting off with the title "crushing" on my first day of ER might imply some sort of intense physical trauma, but it's the only word that describes the horribleness I saw today.

It's more of an emotional horribleness.

So imagine this. You are a new 4th year medical student and your first rotation is an ER elective. You absolutely fall in love with it and decide, "This is IT! This is what I'm doing." You talk to lots of people and find out it's a really good idea to get at least one away rotation if that's what you're going into. Great. So you get on the ball trying to find one. Turns out the only ER program in a city you want to go to has a couple openings. You try as hard as you can to get it set up and are even told when and where orientation is the first day. So you DRIVE from Tennessee across the country to get there in time to start on August 1st.

So you get to orientation just as its starting. Some big burly guy at the front is counting people and says, "There's one more person here than there should be." You say that it's probably you because you've been trying to get all the paperwork ironed out still.

"I'm sorry, but you have to leave. We don't have you on our roll and so you can't be here for orientation."

What do you say? Well, how about, "All my stuff is at student affairs. They're getting it together so I can be here."

"No. I'm sorry. We don't have your stuff yet from them and so we can't enroll you, so you can't be here."

"Can I pick my shifts and do all this after I get it worked out."

"No. You can't be here. We don't have you on our rolls so you can't be in orientation and if you miss orientation you can't rotate this month."

"But I drove from Tennessee to be here...."

"Sorry, but no."

So, as it turns out, that's exactly what happened this morning. Some poor girl who came all the way from Tennesse got kicked out of orientation. Imagine lining things at home to live for a month in a different city and then getting there and the job you thought you were there for is still open, but since your paperwork wasn't finished before 7 am on day 1 you lose that whole month. And even though the administrative people beg and plea for the boss to let you stay, the boss says, "No. Rules are rules." And then you're totally screwed, because it turns out that the big, burly guy is actually the residency director for that school and you've now made a situation where you'll never get in to that school because you couldn't get your paperwork together in time.