Nothing can quite prepare a junior doctor for the first time they have to make a decision about a patient's medication.
"There's a difference between learning all the theory and being there as a medical student and actually doing it yourself. Feeling the pressure as you're about to chart someone," junior doctor Charles Lloyd said.
"You're terrified the first time you're going to click that 'yes, sign this medication' and it is my call that they are taking this medication."
But thankfully in the first few weeks of working at Canberra Hospital, Dr Lloyd has had someone by his side who knows exactly what he is feeling.
Serena Mevissen has just completed her first year as a junior medical officer.
"It's been a wild ride so the first year, like starting any new job is stressful and starting a new job as a doctor is stressful and has an incredibly steep learning curve," she said.
"Like Charles, I remember being stressed charting paracetamol for the first time but I've gained competence and I'm much more comfortable charting paracetamol now."
Dr Mevissen was paired with Dr Lloyd for his first two weeks working in the hospital as part of a new handover program to help the new cohort adjust to life as a doctor.
The new doctors were given time to observe the happenings before being given the opportunity to be given a more hands-on role.
"We had three days where we would sit in the background and watch what's happening a bit more just to get the feel of how that team works and what it's going to be like," Dr Lloyd said.
"As the week went on, we started getting much more integrated into the team.
"I was doing all the notes, ordering all the medications and Serena was very much there to support me and answer any questions I had along the way which was awesome."
While it was a good experience for the new doctors, last year's junior medical officers also got a lot out of it.
"This first year has been really amazing and I think it's been really nice having the new doctors on the ward because it's given me a chance to slow down and reflect," Dr Mevissen said.
"In your career as a doctor it's really easy to not stop and take stock of how far you've come, especially when I'm just sort of looking towards the future and on my next rotation.
"It's been really nice having the juniors around and realising how far I've come and how much more I've come into myself as a doctor because I was very nervous about that at the beginning."
It's part of a push to ensure junior doctors have better support at the hospital. There are 96 new doctors at the hospital this year.
Junior doctors have faced issues with poor culture and bullying at Canberra Hospital over recent years.
Doctors said it was common in some departments for junior doctors to be yelled at and publicly dressed down. A group of junior doctors have also lodged a class action suit for unpaid, unrostered overtime.
A survey, held last year, by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has suggested improvements for junior doctors in Canberra.
This showed 73 per cent of Canberra's junior doctors would recommended their workplace as a place to train, up from 60 per cent the year before. However, it was lower than the national average of 79 per cent.
At Canberra Hospital, 70 per cent of those surveyed said their workplace supported staff wellbeing. This was the highest ever result for the hospital but still lower than the national average of 79 per cent.
Another change which has been made is a psychologist has been employed to support junior doctors throughout the year.
A dedicated psychologist, Louise Ramsay, has also been employed to support junior doctors throughout the year.
"When you work as a doctor it's quite a big bridge that you need to walk over to access community supports and a lot of the stresses in the workplace that doctors experience don't really fit into the category of going to need to see a psychologist or a counsellor in the community," Dr Ramsay said.
"It makes more sense for supports to come to them so embedding a psychologist in an existing support office for the medical workforce is pretty innovative.
"This is the start of a program that we see growing pretty strong legs and growing into the future."
Doctors are able to access the service without making an appointment.
"Any JMO can walk through that door and bring absolutely anything to us from wellbeing to logistics to a personal issue outside their life to a clinical question," Dr Ramsay said.
"We have people walk in every day, several a day."
