I've been feeling quite active this week. Surprising because I've done a lot of hours over the last 4 weeks. And even with a good thing, you tend to flag after a while.

I think I finally feel quite settled in the job. We move departments every four months and within this four months we move every six weeks to a new ward. New faces, new routines. I move again in a week's time.

I think for many people when you go to the doctor you think they will be able to sort any problem out. To a certain extent that is true, we all have the same basic training and should be able to pick up on the severe of almost any problem. People are aware of specialists too - that if you have a certain problem you need to see them.

In many hospitals that isn't too difficult to arrange for most things. My particular hospital is a specialist cancer hospital. And that is all we deal with - cancer. As cancer can affect any part of the body you have to "be up" on the whole body, however you cannot be an expert in everything.

A couple of my patients have needed specialist input this week and you have to learn how to sell problems to them. I quite like talking to other specialists and discussing patients - it crystallises your thoughts about the problems at hand.

Not having a resident urologist, anaesthaetist, gastroenterologist etc does cause problems though. I'm not a pushy or pestering type of person but I've had to learn to be more assertive to get some people to listen about what is happening with some patients and get there input.

There have been times this week where I wish I could be an anaesthaetic surgeon with a sideline in physiotherapy and sort some of my patient's problems out. Then I wish I was a social worker and housing officer. And a radiologist to get that scan done.

But you can't do everything. And that is where the gift of the gab, persistence and luck comes in. That is what I have being practising this week.

Thank God I have deep, deep levels of patience.