Original post by DemocracyIt really depends on your stage of training and the specialty you're working in. During FY1, my days were mostly spent writing the notes on the ward round, making phone calls and referrals, chasing and requesting investigations, writing discharge summaries, taking blood and other practical procedures, talking to relatives, and reviewing any patients who became acutely unwell on the ward e.g. having a temperature, chest pain, low blood sugar, seizures, etc.
Being on call at night either meant admitting new patients to the acute medical unit (fun, interesting) or covering the existing inpatients (more stressful).
Hours are variable. An on call shift is 12.5 hours long. A normal day on medicine is supposedly 9-5, but in reality we were there any time until 8 PM (happened once on a particularly awful day), but probably finishing at 6:30 PM on average. Surgery was a bit more civilised, and generally you could leave on time.
As an SHO the day to day timetable is similarly variable, and it heavily depends on the specialty you work in. I work in a surgical specialty at the moment, so there's far less to do in terms of referrals, phone calls etc, so actually I get to do quite a lot of clinical work like admitting emergency patients, going to clinic, assisting in theatres and so on.
Conversely, colleagues of mine working on overstretched medical wards are still doing the exact same jobs as when they were FY1s i.e. mostly organisational admin jobs, which is obviously not great.
But in terms of what each day is like, well that really depends on what I'm scheduled to be doing on that particular day. Holding retractors in theatres for hours and hours is neither interesting nor particularly educational in my opinion but you still have to grit your teeth and do it without looking obviously bored. On the other hand, being the first person to admit an emergency patient, thinking about what might be causing their symptoms, coming up with a management plan, discussing it with a senior and learning something along the way is definitely one of those "this is why I'm glad I became a doctor" moments.
Basically: don't expect the training system to be perfect and try and take the long view would be my tips for staying happy.