why do people say this? I have worked in a hospital for 10+ years - it is a mixed model, time on the floor (ICU/ER), and time in "the basement". I love it. I rarely bored. I bust my butt on the floors, and a day in the basement helps keeps me sane but having an "Easy day". I moonlighted for two of the big chains and I think I had one "easy day" and that was at a store who closed it doors due to a lack of business.
As someone who works in both retail and hospital, and finds hospital fairly boring and unfulfilling, I'll tell you why I would say that:
- Rounds are boring beyond all belief. I have a pretty short attention span for listening to someone (especially an intern or a new resident... lord save me) present a patient and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out having to listen to it. Plus most of the patients are usually pretty depressing to hear about. I would be so happy if I never had to go to rounds again in my life.
- Limited formulary. In retail, I need to know about immunizations, OTCs, and pretty much any med under the sun that a provider could write for, and for any population (peds/adult/geriatric, male/female/transgender, etc). And patients are always asking crazy and interesting questions about their meds. In hospital, I feel like I see the same meds over and over and over again. Zosyn, Vanco, PPIs, and warfarin are like 75% of my day, I swear.
- I don't think doing kinetics, anticoag monitoring, or antimicrobial stewardship are interesting, intellectually stimulating, or rewarding in any way, yet most hospitals seem to emphasize how "clinical" they are with these activities. Yawn.
- So many protocols. I could probably program a robot to follow an algorithm and have it do like half of my work. Sure there are cases that require clinical judgment, but most of the time, the processes are written out in such detail that you rarely get the chance to do so.
- Limited patient interaction. I love speaking to patients and counseling them. And believe it or not, 99% of the patients I speak to in retail are very grateful and appreciative of my help. Even in a hospital that emphasizes a lot of patient med recs and discharge counseling, I don't get the same fulfillment from my patient interactions, and most of the time you can tell you're just annoying these poor patients who are already overwhelmed with everything else going on in the hospital. This is probably the biggest factor for me.
Obviously this is all subjective and dependent on your particular institution, so I'm glad you enjoy your job, but I don't think it's unimaginable that other people would find it boring. Everyone likes different stuff.