The Clinical Elephantucator

Illustration by Lynda Richardson

While most species that exist in the healthcare habitat spend most of their time at the forefront of the ecosystem, working with patients directly on a day-to-day basis, there are many creatures that choose not to, preferring a life surrounded by the bodies and limbs of countless plastic automatons over one spent in the scrutiny of the public, and the dreaded eye of Sauron (the GMC).  Lords of their own rubbery graveyards, these are Clinical Elephantucators.

Explorers will make their first encounter with an elephantucator very early on in their voyages,  usually in some distant part of the hospital dedicated to the training of young explorers. Tables adorned with plastic body parts  and under the unending, uncanny-valley gaze of an assortment of dummy heads, the clinical elephantucator is unperturbed by the eeriness of its surroundings.  Using  items found in the environment, the elephantucator seeks only to educate and train explorers in the skills they'll need to survive the healthcare habitat.

Given the environment's secluded nature and distance from the domain of patients, at first glance many explorers can perceive time spent in this slightly creepy patient-desolate wasteland to be completely fruitless, but this observation is far from the truth. In few areas of the hospital will an explorer be able to practice their clinical skills at such a high rate (unlike plastic arms, most patients tend to object when they are repeatedly stabbed with a cannula), and teaching sessions come more frequently in the plastic graveyard than on the ward. Particularly in early years, time spent with clinical elephantucators are vital.

The clinical elephantucator takes great pleasure in spreading its wealth of knowledge of the healthcare habitat to those eager to learn. Be this clinical skills, history or examination or  OSCE advice, the species has extensive insight into what is expected of an explorer, and therefore can provide some of the best guidance, particularly in terms of what to revise and what to include or exclude on OSCE stations where an explorer's time is running short. Some will even let you take treasures from the graveyard, including gloves (the single biggest bane of this individual explorer's existence), cannulas and countless more, enabling practice away from the healthcare habitat entirely.

One note of caution for explorers to take is that elephantucators, not tied down with treating countless patients, possess an almost perfect memory, meaning individuals of the species can retain knowledge regarding a specific explorer  despite not having see them for weeks, months or even years. This can be beneficial to those who make positive first impressions, but hazardous to an individual who makes a negative or clumsy impression. No matter how many times you have taken blood perfectly since, the elephantucator will remember that first time when you boasted of your own ability, only to stab yourself taking it out of the packet. And given the species desire to spread knowledge, he will enjoy ensuring everyone else knows as much as he does.

The elephantucator is a friend to the novice explorer, a guiding hand to teach all that they need to survive life in the bustling ecosystem that is the healthcare habitat.

The Medgehog

Illustration by Lynda Richardson

The vast majority of the healthcare habitat is a year-round jungle, flourishing with patients to treat, staff to follow and assist and tasks for any hard working explorer to do 24:7.However, at certain times of day (lunchtime), certain times of year (Summer) or in certain departments (I'm sure you know which ones), this lush ecosystem can quickly become empty, barren or quiet, making time spent there by explorers far less rewarding and exciting. With little to do and few organisms to work with, many species of the doctor genus hibernate, their routine and lifestyle becoming more suited to the harsh environment. These are the medgehogs.

Morphologically, the medgehog remains a fairly typical member of the medic genus - industrious, capable and intelligent - but the activities that the creatures take part in are drastically altered, with individuals dedicating copious amounts of time to a truly dull task, the tediousness of which is expanded exponentially during observation over participation. This painful, mind-numbing ritual, which all doctors must partake in, but the medgehog is most open in performing, is paperwork.

No explorer, at any point since the dawn of time, has ever uttered the phrase "Oh joy! I get to watch this medgehog write up some notes on a patient that I have never met, and will never meet as they were discharged this morning! Life is good!". If an explorer should even attempt to observe the medgehog doing paperwork, the explorer will become susceptible to "Zack Snyder syndrome", so named due to the altering of the individual's perception, with everything around appearing to enter a state of gratuitous slow motion.

After a few minutes of observing, ZS syndrome advances, with the words written by the camedic losing all meaning to the perceiver. A sentence rich in verbs, nouns, pronouns and other grammaticae will instead appear to the explorer as "word word word, word word word word", not unlike what many explorers experience whilst reading something that they have no interest in reading. The subject becomes compelled to check their phone at an increasing frequency, in the vain hope that someone has contacted them in their hour of need, to save them from this monotomy - but normally with no such fortune.

These symptoms quickly become unbearable, so an explorer must try to find an alternative task to observing the medgehog in full-on paperwork mode. Options available include:

1. Inquire to the medgehog directly about their activities - the species is normally happy to divulge, but many pieces of paperwork bear so little interest that even the individual is unavailable to procure any nugget of information to save the explorer from their tedium
2. Offer to assist the medgehog in their ritual - the medgehog will welcome assistance, but the nature of a lot of paperwork can only be managed by the creature itself, so do not be surprised to have the request rejected. Drug note re-writing is always useful practice for an explorer, as it is a likely item to appear in an explorer's end-of-expedition examinations.
3. Search for different activities - in harsh environments, other diversions and experiences are sparse, but oases can be present. Ask other doctors or nurses (Alpha nurses are particularly useful in this situation) about tasks that need doing. Or just visit a patient for a quick chat.
4. Leave the habitat - sometimes the habitat is totally dead, and an explorer will learn more in their study. This option should only be considered when all others are exhausted.

Medgehog activity is not exciting, but their hibernation is an important part of their survival in the healthcare habitat. The doctor genus sometimes must prioritise completing work in an efficient and careful manner over being  a source of diversion for explorers, meaning that sometimes we must make the most of what we have.

The Trapdoor Spident

Illustration by Lynda Richardson

In this series of blogs, we have so far discussed several species of student, all of which, though highly variable, could easily be classed as "docile" creatures, whose cooperative actions demonstrate no desire to cause harm to their student comrades, seeking only for mutual betterment in the face of the healthcare habitat. Sadly, there are exceptions to the rule, aberrant creatures  that take great pleasure in predating other members of their species. These are the trapdoor spidents.

Spidents feed off of the suffering of their kin, and harvest this sustenance using their lethal modus operandi; a deadly venom known to the outside world as "humiliation". As ambush predators, individuals patiently await the perfect opportunity to strike out - in this instance, when one of their student peers  states a fact or suggests an answer that the spident believes is untrue. When their prey triggers the species' sensitive fact-checking gland (in the area of the brain where other species normally store their soul), the spident uses its lightning quick reflexes to instantly point out the incorrectness of their statement, ensuring that all surrounding individuals can hear, and thus maximising the humiliation that their prey exudes.

With an ancestry dating back to the first spident mocking the first primitive human when he suggested that fire would be totally safe to stick his head in, the species has long since evolved and adapted a variety of ways to use their ambush technique in a variety of situations. In teaching sessions where a difficult question has been asked openly to the group, some individuals will employ a patient silence combined with an inborn resistance to awkwardness. Their prey, buckling under the intense weight of the awkwardness of the situation, are thereby forced into tentatively voicing an answer, and if the trapdoor spident knows this to be incorrect, they will pounce.

Conversely, during revision sessions, others can build up a degree of false confidence in their prey, calling out that "they know absolutely nothing about (insert topic)". Their prey, perceiving the predator to in fact be a fellow student in need, will rush to assist them, running headlong into the spident's clutches. This can be a highly lucrative hunting mechanism, with the student's attempts to educate their perceived comrade being picked apart incessantly by the voracious predator, leaving the student wishing that an asteroid would simply destroy the building, thus putting him out of his misery as well as making the world forget his humiliation, given their sudden need to manage what would now be classified as a "major incident".

Explorers can often fall foul of trapdoor spidents during their forays into medical school and the healthcare habitat beyond, and so must be wary of the species' traps. The aforementioned call for aid is an iconic marker of a spident's metaphorical web of deceit, and thus those rushing to aid must tread cautiously - explorers must be sure that they know the subject to a suitable degree so as to never expose themselves to the species dreaded ambush. In fact, knowledge, alongside a healthy disinhibition to improvise or make up facts, are the best way to avoid spident attacks - if you never err, they will have no opportunity. The protective precursor "I don't know, but could it be...?" will further dampen the toxicity of the creature's bite, if an explorer finds himself forced into guessing an answer in the presence of the predator.

Another point to consider is that spidents themselves are not infallible. On occasion, the species prolonged silence in teaching can lead to them be rounded upon by the tutor, forcing them into the same hazardous gauntlet as they have so frequently forced their prey. And woe betide a spident that answers incorrectly, for they themselves become exposed in the face of more knowledgeable, and therefore deadlier trapdoor spidents.

A creature more to be pitied and cautiously avoided than detested, the trapdoor spident is simply a part of the habitat's ecosystem - an irritating part, but still a part in itself. If avoided, a well-protected explorer can easily navigate all the spident traps in their path, with minimal difficulty.

The Humming-Doctor

Illustration by Lynda Richardson

Life in the healthcare habitat can at times be quite frenetic. Murphy's law dictates that what can go wrong will go wrong, and as such it is not rare for medical staff to suddenly become inundated with a plethora of tasks in a matter of mere minutes, where they had none a short while ago. Though this is a stressful situation to be in for any species, one in particular is well-suited to persevere in this harsh environment - the humming-doctor.

Explorers will normally encounter humming-doctors in more acute specialties, where sudden and urgent task-onslaughts are most abundant. They can be discerned from other species not only by how well they are coping with the heightened pressure, but also through their movements - explorers will note that to shadow this individual requires a great deal more effort than with other species. Unmatched in the healthcare habitat in terms of speed over a short distance, humming-doctors use this velocity to quickly flit from location to location.

Though impressive, explorers assigned to shadow this species should make the effort to keep pace, or run the risk of losing of their target  altogether, especially in habitats with an abundance of winding corridors and small rooms. An explorer may feel self-conscious lightly jogging behind a humming-doctor gliding along effortlessly at what feels like Mach IV, but they will feel more awkward having to check room by room for their target, or waiting in a hall in the vain hope that the individual doubles back on their zigzagging route around the ward.

The second defining feature of the species is also speed-related, this time to their speed of conversation. The humming-doctor's words per minute rate is just under that of an Eminem rap played at fast forward, with individuals seemingly changing topic from patient A to patient B to doctor A to this explorer that they've got shadowing them to what they're doing for lunch, to patient A's blood results and so on - wait, did they say something about their explorer?

This can be tricky for explorers not well-versed with listening and writing down that which is said to them at a fast pace, so the species will quickly leave them in the dust. This can provoke many an explorer to dare the shame of requesting a humming-doctor to repeat themselves, conceding their unworthiness, not to mention running the risk of appearing as if to not have been listening, and therefore wasting the individual's time. The mood of the species is hugely variable, and this can irk individuals of a more stressed-out  disposition. Sadly, with the accuracy of notes and in-care learning being more important than any one explorer's pride, the explorer has no choice but to accept their fate and take this concession on the chin. Not to worry, the humming-doctor is probably too busy to be overly critical anyway.

Though working with the species requires extra effort, explorers will also learn faster, and receive more opportunities to practice skills. The humming-doctor will generally be happy to offload a portion of their work to  the explorer, meaning they can set about a long list of tasks that would be mundane for the species, such as blood taking and rewriting drug charts, but are vital research for any explorer preparing for their OSCE examinations at the end of the year. Practice is the best way to master such skills and tagging onto a humming-doctor makes chances like these present themselves thick and fast throughout the day.

Time spent with this species, which is becoming more widespread with the workloads across the habitat steadily rising, can be hugely valuable if an explorer can keep pace both physically and mentally. Any daring explorer should do their best to shadow this elusive species, and reap the most lucrative experience found on the ward.