When your overworked, under appreciated, overloaded, over stressed, aka burned-out, your so busy doing, you don’t feel anything, which includes giving a damn about the eager young medical student tagging along at your heals, wasting your time, and slowing you down, getting in the way...
Conversely, when you are well rested, healthy, energetic, enthusiastic, and eager to find learning opportunities for this young learner that you have the privelage of teaching today. It's not hard to see how the MS may have a better experience with the 2nd (aka not burned-out)
At any given point 60-80% of my co-residents were burnt out. Several left our specialty in hopes of a more fulfilling life, several left medicine all together.
Attending life is better because theoretically you have some control over how much you work, so you can self titrate.
When it comes to residency and eventually job selection, if the residents are all burnt out by their senior year, you likely won’t be much different. I’d rank that place near the bottom, you don’t want to live life like that. It sucks the joy out of every other aspect of your life. If residents are leaving a program mid way through, especially multiple per year, there likely is a huge problem, avoid that place. Also know that residency programs (at least mine) are not totally honest when recruiting you. Find the residents about to graduate, preferably after a few drinks, and seek their unfiltered opinion.
If your job hunting, and an employer wants to dictate how much and when you work without input from you, they likely don’t care about you, and while the pay might be great, if you work for them for 2-3 years, and dread going to work for the next 5+ years, was it worth it. Conversely, are you looking at a place that values its docs as long term assets to be nurtured and cared for as they will be more efficient, safer, less likely to make mistakes, and less likely to get sued.
Look at the other attendings, are they social, do they hang out, are they excited to show up early for work, do they know each other’s wives, husbands, and kids names and details about their lives, if not there may be a problem. If so, sign me up. Also, look at longevity, if turnover is high, there may be a problem, if most of the docs are stying 20 years, that’s a good thing.
Hope that helps people in a variety of levels of training.
