Replies

I have had residents tell me that they can't take call or see patients because they have been on duty for 36 hours

Next time I go to a hospital, I'll remember to bring a large stick to chase away any resident who looks like he has been on call for 16 hours straight, much less 36. Other than a war or major natural disaster, when do patients really need doctors who can work those hours?

I know what I'm like when I've been up for 20+ hours trying to get a project finished at work. I have no business working on electronics, much less making life and death decisions or cutting into human flesh.

I'm sorry, but those hours are just "macho doctor initiation" BS. They have nothing to do with providing proper treatment for patients.

< /pet peeve>

Next time I go to a hospital, I'll remember to bring a large stick to chase away any resident who looks like he has been on call for 16 hours straight, much less 36. Other than a war or major natural disaster, when do patients really need doctors who can work those hours? I'm sorry, but those hours are just "macho doctor initiation" BS. They have nothing to do with providing proper treatment for patients.

See Post 6.

Inner city public hospitals in major metropolitan areas are war zones.

I had a Navy scholarship to medical school and I did my residency training in military hospitals. When military surgical residents needed exposure to the "Knife and Gun Club", they were were given TAD orders to inner city civilian hospitals.

Even in private civilian practice, someone has to be willing to be the one that drags himself out of bed at 3:00 AM to treat that patient in the Emergency Room that the E.R. doc needs help with.

As the radiologist in a rural county, I put myself on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 9 years (except when I hired a locums for vacation) and it got to the point where the E.R. was calling me back from home 36 times a month. I seriously considered moving away and leaving the county without a radiologist.

Since God created Internet tele-radiology, things have been just great.

However, in medicine, sometimes you have two choices:

1. Getting a specialist that is sleep deprived.

or

2. Getting no specialist at all when you need one at 3:00 AM.

P.S.

Teaching hospitals don't pay their attending physicians very much so they offer other benefits such as the resident slave labor to man the trenches at 3:00 AM. Public teaching hospitals are also where the great hordes of uninsured patients go for medical care so the residents are drowning under a wave of sick humanity.

If you want to avoid over-worked residents, avoid teaching hospitals and go to a private hospital..........but don't necessarily expect to have your doctor at your bedside at 3:00 AM.

Remember, medicine is not 9 to 5.

It's 24-7-365.

There are only a certain number of bodies to cover that number of hours.