Going into 2020

I am a Pakistani doctor from DMC Karachi who never dreamt of USMLE or PLAB but somehow ended up in the seldom heard of country (at least by me at that time) of Sweden. I am also an introvert and have quite a few non-social interests such as crafting, baking, reading, all this fit perfectly in to the slightly cold society and very cold weather of Sweden. The language was interesting but took longer than I had been informed, but I was still very positive.

And then came the process of proving where my education from Pakistan stands in front of the very well developed nation of Sweden. Coming from the DMC culture of taking regular lectures and attending wards, trying to read both British and American textbooks, practicing with past papers, and then molding all that knowledge into how it's actually done in Pakistan and what patients can afford and speaking to them in another language(s) while communicating in another for professional interactions; all the while hearing from professors that we need to do better and be better - it was not easy being in the same line with places known for paying off for medical degrees. But in the end it happened and I completed the degree to be equivalent to Swedish medical exam. I took a sigh of relief that now I will be treated just like any other medical graduate in Sweden. I did get a underläkare job at a clinic/vårdcentral. During my completion degree and during the year that I worked at the clinic, I realized how straightforward Swedish guidelines were. What you study is what you do in reality. What you find on the standard websites is what your consultant will also tell you. In this way I really liked the system of making it easy to follow treatment plans, no confusion in language or units etc.

During the time I worked and since then I have applied for AT (house job) in the region I live in and the areas surrounding it where I could easily commute on  a daily basis. It has been a disappointing ordeal, to say the least. I have still not been able to figure out why certain people get offered jobs at once while others have to wait for longer periods. This is where I am right now an this is my goal, to get a medical license here.

It has been disappointing time in terms of career but other than that these years have been fulfilling in other ways. I have 3 beautiful children now that have filled my life in ways nothing else has. I have had the opportunity and blessing to be able to stay at home with them during their first years and it has been wonderful. I never thought I would say this but I am sure I am a better person and professional because of the things I have gone through in personal life, specially my kids.

I have been writing in this space since the beginning of my journey in Sweden and some of the older information has become obsolete. People still sometimes contact me and I direct them to socialstyrelsen website and encourage them to contact them personally. Every single department and person in Sweden that I have come into contact with, be it co-workers, hospital staff, at job center, at tax office; they have all been very professional, nice and courteous, eager to help.

Life in Sweden in itself is very lonely. Swedish people don't want to intrude in others' lives, immigrants don't prefer to mix with other nationalities and of course family is very far away. It can be said that it is the price to be paid for living in one of the best countries in the world. But the deeper I think about it, the more I realize that it's not just Sweden that is this way. The whole world is coming closer together at our fingertips and at the same time people all over are becoming lonelier. We are able to choose the content we consume and that's what we do even with our contacts, trying to edit them to fit our needs rather than accepting them as a whole with their flaws and everything. It has become harder to take criticism and is labelled as an attack very quickly. 

I do think a lot about my future plans of working and living in Sweden and am planning to increase the effort I put into the job-search process, looking for loopholes, my deficiencies and things I might have overlooked before. I had become very disappointed but I plan to leave it all behind me and start fresh. I do plan to record everything as a timeline to AT, even if at this point I am clueless about what the future holds. But I do have hope. And that is good enough right now. In this world of rushing competitively, if I get some time to sit and breathe, who am I to complain?