Any one else think the hours we work as medical students is f'ing ridiculous

Started by medgrlsox21
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medgrlsox21

medgrlsox21

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So this is somewhere between complaining and downright bitching. I started an internal medicine AI at the community hospital associated with my medical school. I have call for 30 hours straight. I am the only one. The interns don't do call anymore and the 2nd and 3rd years use a night float system. So as the hours role by I get new fresh people in that boss me around, expecting me to be bright eyed and bushy tailed. The other AIs in the university hospital don't take call (because its no longer utilized anymore call is until 8pm and then night float). I know many places still have call. I was just wondering if anyone else thinks this is bull****. I'm paying to work 30 hours straight, I have to pay to board my dogs during this time, and if I had kids, Feck if I know what I'd do with them.
 
medgrlsox21 said:
So this is somewhere between complaining and downright bitching. I started an internal medicine AI at the community hospital associated with my medical school. I have call for 30 hours straight. I am the only one. The interns don't do call anymore and the 2nd and 3rd years use a night float system. So as the hours role by I get new fresh people in that boss me around, expecting me to be bright eyed and bushy tailed. The other AIs in the university hospital don't take call (because its no longer utilized anymore call is until 8pm and then night float). I know many places still have call. I was just wondering if anyone else thinks this is bull****. I'm paying to work 30 hours straight, I have to pay to board my dogs during this time, and if I had kids, Feck if I know what I'd do with them.
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if you don't do it. trust me when i say someone else will do far more for way less.
 
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Congratulations, you are on your way to becoming another disgruntled physician. I'm in line 3 spots ahead of you.
 
As my dean said at the beginning of our third year (in regards to long hours, not getting rotations sites you selected, getting evaluations that are based on no actual observation whatsoever, etc.)

"Life is unfair. Deal with it."
 
Siverhideo1985 said:
As my dean said at the beginning of our third year (in regards to long hours, not getting rotations sites you selected, getting evaluations that are based on no actual observation whatsoever, etc.)

"Life is unfair. Deal with it."
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Yeah, that's the way to improve this career field.
 
Siverhideo1985 said:
As my dean said at the beginning of our third year (in regards to long hours, not getting rotations sites you selected, getting evaluations that are based on no actual observation whatsoever, etc.)

"Life is unfair. Deal with it."
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For years this has been my rebuttal to the civil rights and feminist movements.
 
On an away rotation, I had my regular day, then a night of call, and then the next day, all potentially without sleep (worked out to something like 36 hours awake running around the hospital/OR).

It sucked at the time, but it also let me know what my limits were. Incidentally, around 2PM the next day, I began falling asleep in the OR while standing, with my eyes open.

RedShift raises a good point - part of the reason that physicians get paid well and receive the respect they do is because they bust ass and work smarter and harder than the next guy. If the job were easy, more people would be agreeable to the requirements and pretty soon we'd be a bunch of nurses (and be paid accordingly).

I don't know about you, but I didn't go to nursing school.
 
Dubaifan490 said:
Where are all the progressives???

36 hour shifts for medical students who aren't even in residency? Imagine how much they would be yelling and screaming if nursing students were made to work those kinds of hours, but since doctors are "rich", they don't care.
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Nurses (let alone the students) would be crying their heads off; hell, they get irate if their shift change is delayed 15 minutes over their 8 hour limit.

But, they receive either an associates or bachelors degree, they get paid $40K a year, don't have the autonomy that physicians do, don't have the knowledge and ability to save lives that physicians do, don't have the ability to start up their own practice, etc. etc.

Keep arguing for easier requirements for med school and then residency, and pretty soon people are going to start thinking the whole profession is disposable (and it will be).

Physicians' respect, autonomy, and income all hinge on the fact that they are hard to replace. There is a finite amount being produced each year, and it is a long road to completion.

Once that disappears, we'll be taking orders from DNPs.
 
astrocreep96 said:
Nurses (let alone the students) would be crying their heads off; hell, they get irate if their shift change is delayed 15 minutes over their 8 hour limit.

But, they receive either an associates or bachelors degree, they get paid $40K a year, don't have the autonomy that physicians do, don't have the knowledge and ability to save lives that physicians do, don't have the ability to start up their own practice, etc. etc.

Keep arguing for easier requirements for med school and then residency, and pretty soon people are going to start thinking the whole profession is disposable (and it will be).

Physicians' respect, autonomy, and income all hinge on the fact that they are hard to replace. There is a finite amount being produced each year, and it is a long road to completion.

Once that disappears, we'll be taking orders from DNPs.
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I am not saying that residency should be easy, I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of some progressives who seem to treat anyone who does or is expected to make at least $100K as less than human.
 
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Dubaifan490 said:
I am not saying that residency should be easy, I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of some progressives who seem to treat anyone who does or is expected to make at least $100K as less than human.
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What progressive has made that statement or holds that belief out in the real world or in this thread? Looks like you're just frustrated and throwing out big words there to create a boogie man to get angry and raise your pitch fork at rather than think of a novel solution to the situation.
 
Honestly, I'm annoyed that our school doesn't make us take regular call (though we're not on a night float system). I agree with an earlier poster that said I want as much experience as humanly possible -- and given that residency hour restrictions have been taken to an extreme, I don't even know how much of that experience I'll get during residency..

In response to the OP: that does suck if it's really unequal (aka nobody but you is taking call), though it would be a funny feeling to be in the hospital by yourself as first call as a medical student. Not sure I get the entire picture of what's going on here. I don't get the impression you were really complaining about taking call so much as complaining about being put in a very unfair situation where you don't really have a team and are just required to sit around in-house for an arbitrary # of hours.

In response to others who have posted "supporting" the OP (but really bitching about how hard their lives are): suck it up. Medicine requires a lot of sacrifice for a reason. Honestly, listening to people on this board, it's downright frightening how everyone feels they're entitled to go through medical school and residency with a minimum of difficulty (hell, with a minimum of inconvenience). That's a piss-poor attitude for a field that will at least occasionally require you to sacrifice family, sleep, and personal happiness for the sake of your job.

On the other hand, maybe you'll match into derm.

EDIT: As an aside, I'm an MS2. Please take my post with a HUGE grain of salt on that fact alone.
 
As a new intern, I wish we still had 30 hour call. Night float system sucks. You actually get less time off because you work all day every day. You never know your patients because there are so many hand-offs. And patients who are in the acute phase of their illness (eg the first 6 hours of septic workup) are handed off to people who didn't do the admission and don't know everything thats going on.

Its dangerous for patients, creates more work for interns and seniors and ultimately results in less time at home because I spend more time commuting/have to get to work earlier to get to know all the new patients I will have to see.

Its probably hard to see it since you're a med student still and not truly responsible for your patients. But the new hours requirements is the worst system ever. I'm waiting for them to finally understand that hand offs kill more patients than long hours. Then we can just go back to 30 hour call.
 
Bacchus said:
I agree with this ^ a lot, but he shouldn't be pulling those hours if no one else is.
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No he shouldn't. Especially since medical students can't actually do that much for their patients. Sounds like a waste of everyone's time to make a med student do 30 hours.

Doesn't change the fact that we should all still be doing 30 hours.
 
It's only temporary. Just suck it up for now. There are no restrictions on student hours, unfortunately, because no one tracks it. Btw, I've been on rotation with students that work 100+ hours a week, which does violate resident work hours. I refused to compete with that.
 
You can obviously tell who the (future) surgeons are in this thread. I can never understand why, but surgeons always pride themselves on the stupid amount of hours they work and look down at other specialties/professions who work less (which is everybody!)

As a student, when I worked 30 hour shifts on surgery I really wasn't learning a whole lot and I sure wasn't contributing much to the hospital. If a nurse had a question/needed an order it (obviously) always had to go to the resident. So what's the point of requiring students to be there for such long shifts?

The pride! Because if we didn't anyone could do it!.....Give me a break.
 
alwaysaangel said:
As a new intern, I wish we still had 30 hour call. Night float system sucks. You actually get less time off because you work all day every day. You never know your patients because there are so many hand-offs. And patients who are in the acute phase of their illness (eg the first 6 hours of septic workup) are handed off to people who didn't do the admission and don't know everything thats going on.

Its dangerous for patients, creates more work for interns and seniors and ultimately results in less time at home because I spend more time commuting/have to get to work earlier to get to know all the new patients I will have to see.

Its probably hard to see it since you're a med student still and not truly responsible for your patients. But the new hours requirements is the worst system ever. I'm waiting for them to finally understand that hand offs kill more patients than long hours. Then we can just go back to 30 hour call.
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Wait, aren't you an ER resident?
 
And yet at my school we're taking mandatory classes that attempt to "teach us" more efficient information flow to reduce medical error. No duh, how about we start with reducing physician fatigue. :idea:
 
if i tell you i was doing q3 and pretty much 36 hours per call for 2-3 months straight because we stay the whole day after call anyways would that make you feel any better?
 
xanthomondo said:
You can obviously tell who the (future) surgeons are in this thread. I can never understand why, but surgeons always pride themselves on the stupid amount of hours they work and look down at other specialties/professions who work less (which is everybody!)
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I'd like you to find me a surgical resident who thinks that they could do this job with fewer hours and less time.

We work long hours and have longer residencies than other specialties because there's so much for us to learn, and because you can only learn by doing in this field. You can't read a book to learn how to sew a hepaticojejunostomy, but you can read a book or look at pictures to manage plenty of medical problems.


As a student, when I worked 30 hour shifts on surgery I really wasn't learning a whole lot and I sure wasn't contributing much to the hospital. If a nurse had a question/needed an order it (obviously) always had to go to the resident. So what's the point of requiring students to be there for such long shifts?
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I picked challenging rotations to see if I could handle it as a resident. I was able to do it as an M3, so I knew I could handle it as a resident. I was right.

alwaysaangel said:
As a new intern, I wish we still had 30 hour call. Night float system sucks. You actually get less time off because you work all day every day.
Click to expand...
DING DING DING! I'm sitting at home at noon, because I'm post call.
 
Yeah this thread definitely seems a little exaggerated to me. I am a current MS3 who has gone through peds and two selectives (inpatient cards and Gas), and understandably they are no Ob/Gyn or Surgery but still I feel like our schedule as med students is very doable. We are really not expected to be in the hospital if we're not learning, which means that we have to take minimal call. From my understanding, call for med students is purely meant to be an experience, not a learning experience by any means. Surely you might learn one or two things at 2:00am, but the real learning happens during the day when every one is fresh. I understand that as a resident you need to put in the hours, but as a resident learning is not your only job. Contrary to what many medical students may believe, Learning, is our ONLY job. If your school is making you stay long hours for call you should definitely complain.
 
ive done 30+ hour call (i think my longest was 36) and it wasnt too bad.. most days resident sent me to bed at 2 am, woke up at 6-7 and was ready to go again.. albeit a bit tired the next day.. the purpose of 30+ hour call, as best I can tell, is just to confuse you as to what day of the week it is. a better system would allow for 12 hour shifts of day or night call.

here is why:

some of my best experiences happened between 11pm-4am, unfortunately for poor medical students, learning happens in the hospital overnight when no or few attendings are around. this is some of the best 1 on 1 time you have with senior residents in the OR or on the floor - and they sometimes genuinely need your help, and because you're actually helping with something they tend to be a bit more talkative about what theyre doing, why their doing it and the disease process being treated

i think the medical establishment needs to realize that people are not meant to work >12 hour days - and this is coming from someone who wasn't destroyed by 30+ hour call.

the problem with reducing work hours is increasing hand-off errors by increasing the number of times one needs to hand-off patients. its been shown in studies to be dangerous.. its strange to me that i haven't seen any implementation of a system to reduce these errors at the hospital where i am currently rotating, it seems to me that hand off could definitely be streamlined - there is no process, just residents telling other residents who is sick, and what needs to be done overnight. what a streamlined process would look like, im not sure.. but it should be attempted.
 
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