Fed Up???

[GMO2003]

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I feel that my 2 years as a GMO have been a restful respite from much of the mental and physical pain endured during internship. It has allowed me to rejuvenate and once again foster a more positive outlook on my future in medicine. However, I cannot help to think of how residency will treat me. I remember the sleepless nights of internship and the constant monotony and occasinaly mental abuse.

Have any of you become so jaded and bitter from residency that you've felt like packing it in and giving up? I mean just thought about saying to hell with this $hit life is too short let me check myself out of this insane asylum.

Just interested in some of you insights.

 

[southerndoc]

I just remind myself of the amount of years I have invested to ruin it all now. Seriously, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 4 years of residency. I am definitely over the hump now!

My residency hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be, but residency is still a rough process. I can't imagine how residency was a few years ago when residents' work hours weren't limited.

Just hang in there and look at the rewards you will have for finishing!

 

[Goose...Fraba]

GMO2003,

a quick question, are you able to find work with just a internship? Where can one work, urgent care clinics, ED's, doing physicals? Is it hard to find malpractice carrier? The only reason I ask is my wife is thinking about taking some time off after internship so we can have kids and start a family (we are both in medical school right now), while I will continue on with residency. is this possible? she just wants to work maybe a day or two a week so she doesnt "lose" all her medical knowledge and kinda stay in the loop.

 

[beyond all hope]

I started work in EM at one of the most down-and-dirty county hospitals in the country. One of my attendings told me. 'You'll think about quitting a hundred times in your intern year."

You're learning to be a doctor, but everyone sees you as a scutmonkey.

You're at a definate advantage going back to residency in that you've had an extra two years of practice under your belt. Relatively simple patient care tasks will be easy for you, giving you mental effort to think about more difficult and complicated stuff.

Residency sucks. It does get easier, though. I'm going into my third year and I still work my tail off but at least I feel like I'm on the ball. I can't wait to graduate!

 

[Teufelhunden]

GMO2003,

What is your specialty? Not all residencies are created equally, right? Some fields (e.g. psych, pm&r, pmph) have relatively benign residencies (compared to surgical fields, for example).

I've heard this exact same sentiment expressed by other GMOs. It seems to me, that for some people at least, it's almost a bad thing to do a GMO tour in that it re-aquaints you with what "regular" life is, leaving you less apt to return to the insanity of, say, a surgery residency. I've certainly heard of a lot of people who changed their mind during GMO tour, i.e. switching from OBGYN to FP for example.

I think some doctors in training almost "forget" what it's like to be a normal person. One of my surgery chief residents told me a few years ago that he'd finally taken a fairly lengthy vacation, got regular sleep everynight, and thought: "Wow, so this is what it feels like to be a regular person!"

Personally, I think some fields of medicine ask too much from people...to an unhealthy extent. God bless people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to be surgeons and OBGYNs b/c we certainly need them. However, I recognized a few things pretty early in this process (I'm graduating next month):

1) I not only LIKE sleep, I REQUIRE it.

2) I like coming home at the end of the day and STAYING home.

3) I want to have some well-defined boundries between my personal and professional lives

4) I have hobbies/interests outside of medicine that I will not give up

Don't get me wrong, I actually loved my surgery rotation, but after even just a couple weeks of 70-80 hour weeks I became a zombie...stopped working out, almost forgot what my wife looked like, had no clue what was going on in the world...that's when I realized that that life just wasn't for me.

BTW...if you hadn't already figured out, I'm going into psych 🙂

 

[Dire Straits]

GMO2003,

What is your specialty? Not all residencies are created equally, right? Some fields (e.g. psych, pm&r, pmph) have relatively benign residencies (compared to surgical fields, for example).

I've heard this exact same sentiment expressed by other GMOs. It seems to me, that for some people at least, it's almost a bad thing to do a GMO tour in that it re-aquaints you with what "regular" life is, leaving you less apt to return to the insanity of, say, a surgery residency. I've certainly heard of a lot of people who changed their mind during GMO tour, i.e. switching from OBGYN to FP for example.

I think some doctors in training almost "forget" what it's like to be a normal person. One of my surgery chief residents told me a few years ago that he'd finally taken a fairly lengthy vacation, got regular sleep everynight, and thought: "Wow, so this is what it feels like to be a regular person!"

Personally, I think some fields of medicine ask too much from people...to an unhealthy extent. God bless people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to be surgeons and OBGYNs b/c we certainly need them. However, I recognized a few things pretty early in this process (I'm graduating next month):

1) I not only LIKE sleep, I REQUIRE it.

2) I like coming home at the end of the day and STAYING home.

3) I want to have some well-defined boundries between my personal and professional lives

4) I have hobbies/interests outside of medicine that I will not give up

Don't get me wrong, I actually loved my surgery rotation, but after even just a couple weeks of 70-80 hour weeks I became a zombie...stopped working out, almost forgot what my wife looked like, had no clue what was going on in the world...that's when I realized that that life just wasn't for me.

BTW...if you hadn't already figured out, I'm going into psych 🙂

i once expressed similar sentiments to a surgeon. i then watched as he slowly began to smirk and proceed to say that most male med students weren't "man" enough to handle a surgical residency so that is why they go into what he called "cream puff" residencies. gee whiz!

 

[Justin4563]

i once expressed similar sentiments to a surgeon. i then watched as he slowly began to smirk and proceed to say that most male med students weren't "man" enough to handle a surgical residency so that is why they go into what he called "cream puff" residencies. gee whiz!

you should look up to see where he is now.. If he is in any reasonbaly sized city he is crawling around every floor of the hospital looking for hernias to fix to make 150k a year or he is doing insurance physicals to supplement his income.. general surgery is in terrible shape now.. Too many surgeons not enough work

 

[Dire Straits]

you should look up to see where he is now.. If he is in any reasonbaly sized city he is crawling around every floor of the hospital looking for hernias to fix to make 150k a year or he is doing insurance physicals to supplement his income.. general surgery is in terrible shape now.. Too many surgeons not enough work

last i heard he was doing a plastic surgery fellowship. but that was a few years ago so he's probably a plastics attending somewhere. i was a just a green premed wanting to shadow a surgeon and he's who they hooked me up with. i spent my days listening to him diss every specialty besides surgery and brag about how many women he was banging. he was a piece of work that guy was.

 

[Leukocyte]

.......and brag about how many women he was banging. he was a piece of work that guy was.

I think this was just his ego speaking. General Surgery residents do not even have the time to eat, let alone shag.