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So basically -hypothetically speaking- a surgical resident getting married early in PG-y1 would be the worst decision ever...(?)
So basically -hypothetically speaking- a surgical resident getting married early in PG-y1 would be the worst decision ever...(?)
The british-trained docs I know (one a surgeon, the other a nephrologist) both have to deal with 80+ hour weeks.So, speaking of 80-hour workweeks, has anyone read anything, or heard about the experiences of our European & British bretheren?
I understand they have a vastly different system than ours - "registrars" I think they're called, and there is a half-way point in their residency that many can get stuck at, or weeded out entirely...
but I seem to recall the EU labor restrictions are limiting them to something wildly incomprehensible even to us, the 80-hour children... I'm talking like 45 hours a week or so...
Anyone have any knowledge about this? Are old-timey British surgeons griping about the new whipper-snappers and their 45-hour workweek? Have they worked out any more clever methods for staying under those (relatively draconian) restirctions?
The british-trained docs I know (one a surgeon, the other a nephrologist) both have to deal with 80+ hour weeks.
So, speaking of 80-hour workweeks, has anyone read anything, or heard about the experiences of our European & British bretheren?
I understand they have a vastly different system than ours - "registrars" I think they're called, and there is a half-way point in their residency that many can get stuck at, or weeded out entirely...
but I seem to recall the EU labor restrictions are limiting them to something wildly incomprehensible even to us, the 80-hour children... I'm talking like 45 hours a week or so...
Anyone have any knowledge about this? Are old-timey British surgeons griping about the new whipper-snappers and their 45-hour workweek? Have they worked out any more clever methods for staying under those (relatively draconian) restirctions?
At any rate, I'm not sure which system I prefer, although as an older person I think I'd prefer 5 years of surgery training right out of medical school at longer hours than 7 or more with fewer hours.
As another "older person" (and just an intern) I agree with you <g>. The uncertainty of progression is another issue - I met a British Med Student applying to surgery once, over here on a trauma rotation (naturally) - she mentioned that some programs seldomly advance the housestaff (RMO?) to the next level, to assure themselves both of a steady cheap labor force, and also to keep their own competition down. While that struck me as overly pessimistic, I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there.
They're in Scotland, actually. Both of them are training there (in Scotland) right now and they have 80+ hour work weeks.......in England? I mean, otherwise your observation doesn't apply to the poster's question. If they're working 80 hours in the US who cares. Or when you said "have" did you mean "had"?
this week's NEJM (sorry, no time for link) has a commentary on a strike among the union (yes, union!) of german university physicians over an increase in allowable hours to something like 60/week, if I recall. It's interesting to read...
Just got my issue in the mail. They're not in training - they're attendings both at University clinics, and then (a few months later) at municipal clinics striking for better pay - I think what they were protesting wasn't the hours they worked per se, but the fact that their reimbursement was predicated on the fiction that they were working 38 hour workweeks, when in reality they were in the 60s...
As far as my life as an attending relative to my life as a resident, I think the biggest difference is that I have control over my schedule. The control that I have over my life overshadows everything else (including the money).
The attendings I'm working with now don't seem to have control over their lives. By that I mean they never can be sure that they won't have a late consult, and they have to round every weekend.
Acutally, currently I'm on a rotation with private practice guys who take residents. They work like dogs!
Quote from Kimberli Cox - "I blame the fact that I would have rather slept a few more minutes than get up early to eat breakfast or to make a lunch to take with me to the hospital, or even to have something in my coat pocket." - I can't tell you how many times I HAVE brought my lunch, but I can't find the time to eat it - even getting to that particular fridge to grab the sandwich and walk around eating it is sometimes an impossible task when you have 15 minutes between cases to talk to patient's family, dictate, write orders, and run to quickly look at a consult in the ED - there's no lunch break in surgery residency.
Quote from Kimberli Cox - "I blame the fact that I would have rather slept a few more minutes than get up early to eat breakfast or to make a lunch to take with me to the hospital, or even to have something in my coat pocket." - I can't tell you how many times I HAVE brought my lunch, but I can't find the time to eat it - even getting to that particular fridge to grab the sandwich and walk around eating it is sometimes an impossible task when you have 15 minutes between cases to talk to patient's family, dictate, write orders, and run to quickly look at a consult in the ED - there's no lunch break in surgery residency. Supercut is right - it is somewhat inhumane what is expected of us to frequently go 14 hour days with no food, water, or bathroom time - prisoners get to attend to their basic needs better than that.
And to that med student -or premed? who said supercut was a whiner - really, you have no business criticizing unless you have felt what it feels like to be on your feet for 30+ hours straight 2-3 times a week for weeks on end and the days in between be equally busy 12-15 hour days - nonstop action is what we wanted when we chose surgery, and non-stop action is what we got. You don't know quite how draining it is until you've really felt it for months in a row - it's kinda rough.
So, what I'm thinking is...if we, as the newer, younger, generation of surgeons are all starting to feel this way...is there hope we can all get together and change the system in the future. I mean, of course we all know there will be emergencies, your patient who needs a return trip to the OR unexpectedly right as you were leaving at 6pm - we will never abandon that type of responsibility as surgeons, I know, and I don't want to. But in the day-to-day expections of hours - if we all really want 50-60 hour a week jobs, and are willing to live on a slightly lower salary than the traditional 90 hour/week surgeons, why can't we have that? Will we have the courage to change our future practices and make them what we want? I'd love to go to an interview and have the practice try to entice me to work with them by advertizing that they somehow encourage a shorter work week, more vacation time, more call setups where you round on all your groups' patients on the weekend you're on call and they round for you when you're not on call, giving you true weekends off ( I do know some groups offer this so that you don't have to round every single weekend all year long!). But I wonder if any of this will be encouraged...or if my future co-workers will continue in this tradition of voluntary self-abuse because they somehow think it's expected of surgeons. That somehow if we're wanting to plan to maybe, say, have only a 1/2 day clinic every Wednesday and plan Wednesday afternoon off maybe to pick your kid's up from school and coach their sports team or something, it would no longer be seen as a sign of weakness or a sign that you are somehow a bad surgeon b/c you're not as hardcore as the senoir partners in the group. I really think that instead of so many people having to jump ship and look for other careers, why can't we just change the culture of our own?
This might seem contradictiory b/c I am sometimes somewhat anti-80-hour workweek, and I don't like when the younger residents seem to feel entitiled to walk out the door regardless of what's going on with patients - b/c I know our job is not shift work and there is a higher level of responsibility for the patients we operate on. But after training, I really would prefer to try to tailor my practice to where I could work more like a 40-60 hour week and I'd be willing to work on the lower end of the pay scale to do that. Will I be able to find a job where my partners have a similar mindset about trying to maintain a better work-life balance? I hope so.