Med School sucks, Residency is supposed to suck harder

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UT_mikie

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I have very nice residents that let us go early saying "just go home, you are a med student enjoy yourself, you will get your ass kicked next year."

What the hell am I supposed to look forward to? As much as I hate med school I'm completely dreading residency. Sorry to bitch and moan (thats what this forum is for right?) but I've long given up actually enjoying medicine. This has turned into a job for me nothing more. I just hate how every stage has to be one big ass fraternity induction after the next.

Bitching and moaning over. That felt great.

Seriously? Someone give me something positive to look forward to cause residency is not going to be the big sexy party that TV shows portray. On the contrary, q3-4 call, a whole helluva lot more responsibility, your ignorance actually hurting someone. Groan... I want MS 4 to go alot slower.
 
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you won't and can't appreciate it until you're an intern/resident. just remember these days, and cherish every moment of them.

call sounds cool. being responsible sounds cool. and to some degree it can be. but there will be plenty of days where you will envy your med student.

just trust your resident when they tell you to go home. go home, play with your dog, hit the gym, bang your chick/man, masturbate, watch a movie... whatever makes you happy and is legal. just have some fun and cherish it!
 
Hang in there. One of the reason MSIII sucks is that there really isn't any responsibility. Yes, you will work like a dog in residency, but YOU are one making decisions and helping people (and getting paid). It is much better.

Ed
 
I like residency better than med school. For one thing, the work I do actually has a purpose unlike med student work. Yes it is busy but I am finally doing something for patients and I go home at the end of the day and I'm happy.

And this is just internship, I'm not even into the field I actually care about yet.

Don't sweat it. M3 year sucks donkeys, M4 you have some vacation, then in residency you actually get to do whatever it is you have chosen to dedicate your life to. I'm not sure that's so much worse than M4. (Just don't pick a field that's wrong for you.)
 
I have very nice residents that let us go early saying "just go home, you are a med student enjoy yourself, you will get your ass kicked next year."

What the hell am I supposed to look forward to? As much as I hate med school I'm completely dreading residency. Sorry to bitch and moan (thats what this forum is for right?) but I've long given up actually enjoying medicine. This has turned into a job for me nothing more. I just hate how every stage has to be one big ass fraternity induction after the next.

Bitching and moaning over. That felt great.

Seriously? Someone give me something positive to look forward to cause residency is not going to be the big sexy party that TV shows portray. On the contrary, q3-4 call, a whole helluva lot more responsibility, your ignorance actually hurting someone. Groan... I want MS 4 to go alot slower.

I don't get what exactly you are bitching about. I'm an M4 and really am looking forward to residency. What made certain rotations during M3 yr suck so hard was not being able to do anything. I love to keep busy and feel like I'm being tortured when forced to stand and OBSERVE all day long. On certain rotations like medicine where I was busy, even though a lot of it was scut, the days passed by so much faster.
If you are busy now I envy you. Maybe its my school, but it seems like the clinical experiences we have too many students and not enough to do. On OB/GYN I had to compete with the intern just to put in the foley catheters!
I agree with other posters, when you're an MD you will be able to do what you actually came to med school for. After all didn't you go to med school to um...practice medicine???
 
I have very nice residents that let us go early saying "just go home, you are a med student enjoy yourself, you will get your ass kicked next year."

What the hell am I supposed to look forward to?

At least then when you are getting your ass kicked you get to be called a doctor, get to wear a long coat, and take home a puny paycheck. So you'll be living the life.
 
At least then when you are getting your ass kicked you get to be called a doctor, get to wear a long coat, and take home a puny paycheck. So you'll be living the life.

I hope you are joking with the "puny." Some MDs my parents know earn nearly seven digit figures, but that's of course because they have their own clinic. Honestly though, there are plenty of professions that pay as much, if not more than a standard doctor's salary, and with less schooling. But what's more presitgous: "I am a doctor" or "I own a business that pays like a doctor's (standard salary), but I am as dumb as rock?"

I'm just glad that before I registered for this forum and made my career decision, that I didn't choose to focus on getting into medical school, although for some reason I am still interested in plastic surgery. I do thank the members here for sharing some of their experiences though. It will keep me awake at night and reconsidering the plastic surgery option. I will admit however that after some of those stories, that you guys have got serious BAWLS continuing with such careers. 24/7 job.
 
On the contrary, q3-4 call, a whole helluva lot more responsibility, your ignorance actually hurting someone.
From what I understand, you may have some control over the call issue-- hell, by the time I apply for residency, I'll probably rig up a rank list based on 1) location and 2) call schedule. Next year, you could end up with a super-cush transitional year somewhere-- who knows? They vary wildly. Don't panic yet.

I say, keep a keen eye on basic quality of life issues when you interview at different programs. In terms of call schedule/patient load/how much back-up you actually get, you may find some places which aren't too scary. It might mean moving to a smaller town or something, but may be worth it.

Personally, I'm looking forward to getting in early and writing notes that someone out there might actually read!
 
I hope you are joking with the "puny." Some MDs my parents know earn nearly seven digit figures, but that's of course because they have their own clinic.

He meant during residency. I would classify that paycheck as very puny (although i'll be happy with it because its more than I've ever made).
 
I'm doing a Transitional Year at an average to difficult program and this is way easier and better than my last 2 years of medical school.

Medical school just flat out sucks. You're in the hospital 12 hours a day, and you write notes that no one reads. You're made to scrub in for surgeries that you've seen 30 times and you don't give a **** about. You pay an institution enormous amounts of money that then pays people who berate you like you're scum, so it's like adding insult to injury.

With residency, as long as you do your work, no one gives a ****. It's actually a lot easier to go and put in orders than it is - medical student style - to follow someone around and tediously watch them put in orders while at the same time acting like you actually give a ****.
 
At least then when you are getting your ass kicked you get to be called a doctor, get to wear a long coat, and take home a puny paycheck. So you'll be living the life.

some residencies don't give you a long coat until your final year of training!
 
some residencies don't give you a long coat until your final year of training!
that's pretty lame. who does that?

I don't think any doctor at Harvard wears a long coat though - some jazz about how all doctors are still students.
 
He meant during residency. I would classify that paycheck as very puny (although i'll be happy with it because its more than I've ever made).

I think I saw the numbers once, for a resident working 80 hour weeks it came out to just slightly higher than minimum wage.
 
that's pretty lame. who does that?

I don't think any doctor at Harvard wears a long coat though - some jazz about how all doctors are still students.

some general surgery residencies still do it- the only residents wearing long coats are the 5th years.

once you're in a hospital working day to day, and you see the amount of other non-doctor staff (dietitians, nurse case managers, lab techs, phelbotomy team, clinical supervisors, respiratory therapists, i.t. department, facility team members, etc.) that wear long coats, you become unimpressed with the long coat itself, as it doesn't really do much to distinguish anybody.
 
With residency, as long as you do your work, no one gives a ****. It's actually a lot easier to go and put in orders than it is - medical student style - to follow someone around and tediously watch them put in orders while at the same time acting like you actually give a ****.

Cool, that's what I like to hear. The most frustrating part about medical school is the line "since you are only responsible for 2-3 patients you should know them inside and out." But that is next to impossible b/c the nurses don't want to waste their time with you, the interns are the ones making changes which they don't inform you about.

It will be one of the few satisfactions intern year when I can ask a question and finally get a decent answer out of people.
 
I think I saw the numbers once, for a resident working 80 hour weeks it came out to just slightly higher than minimum wage.

I've heard that a million times as well, but it's simply not true. The only way that works is if people give themselves overtime pay (time and a half) for every hour over 40 each week. If you are working 80 hours/week for 49 weeks/year (3 weeks vacation), you're really making $10-12/hour.

Also, depending on your program, you get an additional $5,000-10,000 in benefits, including insurance, educational money, meals, parking, etc.

Most residents that I know are not rich, but live comfortably on their salary. Remember that $42-50K a year is still more than most working professionals make, especially in their late 20's.


Residency is hard work, but it doesn't suck worse than med school. You are doing what you love, and your work is way more relevant. Besides, you get much more used to the pain, and it doesn't hurt as bad. Hang in there.
 
I've heard that a million times as well, but it's simply not true. The only way that works is if people give themselves overtime pay (time and a half) for every hour over 40 each week. If you are working 80 hours/week for 49 weeks/year (3 weeks vacation), you're really making $10-12/hour.
Seeing how that's how almost everyone else paid by the hour is treated, it's a fair move. Then, you're working 100 hours a week for 49 weeks and getting paid $42,000, that's $8.50 an hour. No, it's not minimum wage, but come on, that's how much a new EMT gets paid after taking a 144-hour training class.
 
I just want to second YeasterBunny's point. Internship is so much better than med school. You're finally in the field you want to be in, you have some responsibility, and you don't need someone "supervising" you for every single thing. You are almost never in the observing role -- your time is too valuable (Granted, valued because you're the scut monkey, but still). Try not to get so much anticipatory dread that you lose the ability to see the positive in residency.

Anka
 
Internship is so much better than med school. You're finally in the field you want to be in...

Unless your Derm, Rads, PM&R, Anesthesia...then you're pissed you're forced to do another year of medicine 🙂
 
"Besides, you get much more used to the pain, and it doesn't hurt as bad. Hang in there."


OMG if that's the only way you can justify this being worth it, I think we should all jump off a cliff together. IT doesn't hurt as bad, lolzz lmfao! that was funny
 
Seeing how that's how almost everyone else paid by the hour is treated, it's a fair move. Then, you're working 100 hours a week for 49 weeks and getting paid $42,000, that's $8.50 an hour. No, it's not minimum wage, but come on, that's how much a new EMT gets paid after taking a 144-hour training class.

It's very difficult to compare our job to regular shift workers. The content of our 80 hours/week is very different than someone that works at McDonald's, etc.

Also, you have work in the benefits. I personally get $10K in benefits. I also eat for free every day, and park for free, etc.

As far as 80 vs 100 hours, people consistently working 100 hours per week are either very inefficient, or they're in the wrong program.

A lot of these things are controllable. You can choose where to interview, and how to rank programs, and you can end up in a place with good benefits and a comfortable salary. Or, you can act helpless, willingly pick a program that's 100 hours/week, filled with scut and poor education, in a city with a ridiculously high cost of living, and then cry about everything that's unfair once you get there. It's up to you......


And at the end of the day, $42-50K per year is still a lot of money, except for the residents that grew up in daddy's pocketbook. If that is the case, they probably still have one of his credit cards anyway.
 
i duno this may be controversial but have you thought about pursuing a MBA and just do admin work with your degree after you graduate? or even pathology
 
remember. just a means to an end.

in the end......... :
barack-obama-bling-bling-25322.jpg
 
warlock1.jpg


I think we should wear this white coat to really distinguish ourselves
 
As far as 80 vs 100 hours, people consistently working 100 hours per week are either very inefficient, or they're in the wrong program.
The 100 hours was based on the fact that 40 of your hours are time and a half, so the average employee working 80 hours a week is paid for 100. My wife sure would be, in which case she would make an assload of money as a nurse.

And at the end of the day, $42-50K per year is still a lot of money, except for the residents that grew up in daddy's pocketbook. If that is the case, they probably still have one of his credit cards anyway.
🙄 No, it's not a lot of money. My wife makes more than that, with a lot less education, and neither one of us receives any support from our parents. The residents are making less per hour (even without the overtime correction) than the nurse's aids at the hospitals around here, and they're not even close to what the nurses make. Furthermore, the residency programs are generating revenue for the hospital. Medicare forks out over $110,000, and the resident sees about half of that in the form of income and benefits. So, the hospital isn't even paying you, but they have no trouble working you hard.
 
delayed gratification.

gotta pay to play.
 
remember. just a means to an end.

in the end......... :
barack-obama-bling-bling-25322.jpg

Wow! 😱

I remember complaining to someone not so long ago about how tired I am, even as a 4th year student, and the person told me to think of how much money I'll be making as an E.R. doctor...Somehow, that little rec did nothing for me 👎
 
The 100 hours was based on the fact that 40 of your hours are time and a half, so the average employee working 80 hours a week is paid for 100. My wife sure would be, in which case she would make an assload of money as a nurse.

Well, I now see what you're trying to say, but the logic is flawed. Most people paying your wife or whomever would not allow them to work 80 hours for that main reason, so these hypothetical huge paydays are stupid to talk about. Now, if you want to get into another argument about how we work too much, which wouldn't surprise me, that's fine, but a separate issue.

It's also important to mention that we are basically long-term trainees. We're not getting paid the big bucks because we're still learning how to do our job. Most other jobs don't pay their trainees so well.

It sounds like you have a sugar mamma, anyway, so I don't know what you're crying about.

Furthermore, the residency programs are generating revenue for the hospital. Medicare forks out over $110,000, and the resident sees about half of that in the form of income and benefits. So, the hospital isn't even paying you, but they have no trouble working you hard.

:laugh: Do you really think there's just one big pile of money, and someone near the top is greedily withholding the other $60-70K that's rightfully yours? Where do you think that money goes? Do you know how much it costs to have residents?

Before you complain, find someone that knows more about the distribution of that money, be it someone in the GME office or a program director. It's not me, and I'm not an expert. But, I'm also not making blanket statements about how unfair our salary is. If you talk to someone who actually knows where the money is going, and I turn out to be wrong, I will gladfully admit it. Then, I will join the fight with you to get that money out there that's rightfully mine.

Here's just a few things that pop into my head that probably cost money:

-The teachers have to be paid, and as we all know, academic attendings are not rolling in the money.

-Most teaching hospitals cater to the underserved population, who doesn't have insurance, and is unlikely to pay their bills. Take this population away, and your autonomy and ability to "practice" in residency will disappear.

-Even residents need malpractice insurance. Probably, they should need it more.

-On a day to day basis, the learning doctor wastes a ridiculous amount of money. This comes in the form of unecessary tests, mistakes leading to longer hospital stays with more interventions, wasted supplies (e.g. the intern that has to open 3 central line kits to get the stick), improper documentation, etc, etc, etc.


Trust me. Training doctors is expensive.
 
A lot of these things are controllable. You can choose where to interview, and how to rank programs, and you can end up in a place with good benefits and a comfortable salary. Or, you can act helpless, willingly pick a program that's 100 hours/week, filled with scut and poor education, in a city with a ridiculously high cost of living, and then cry about everything that's unfair once you get there. It's up to you......

you can call residency a lot of things, but i wouldn't call it controllable. You are being dragged around with a metal chain around your neck most of the time. Want a day off? Tough. Don't get one. Want to take some time off? Sure, except you can find another program and waste a few more years. Programs frequently misrepresent themselves, and you can only control so much with the match.

And the colossal debt keeps most people locked in. I wouldn't use the word controllable for much of residency.
 
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It sounds like you have a sugar mamma, anyway, so I don't know what you're crying about.
That's funny, I don't recall saying that I had any financial troubles. Don't be a jerk.

-The teachers have to be paid, and as we all know, academic attendings are not rolling in the money.
And every one of them that has ever addressed this - including the chair of the largest department at the school - has told me that they're not getting paid for their teaching time.

-Even residents need malpractice insurance. Probably, they should need it more.
Every resident I know is practicing under an attending who oversees some/all decisions. Otherwise, yes, I agree there.

-On a day to day basis, the learning doctor wastes a ridiculous amount of money. This comes in the form of unecessary tests, mistakes leading to longer hospital stays with more interventions, wasted supplies (e.g. the intern that has to open 3 central line kits to get the stick), improper documentation, etc, etc, etc.
True, but that mostly goes for the interns. All the medicine residents I've encountered have been much more on their game than the interns, and they've only rarely been second-guessed by the attendings. Besides, and Panda Bear has mentioned this many times, by the time you're farther along in your residency, you have the capacity to greatly increase the productivity of your attendings. They don't have to do the complete H&P if they can simply verify your several key findings and then agree with your plan. Either the intern or I writes a full page note in the chart, and the attending writes "Agree with above. <scribble, MD>" That saves plenty of time. You can't really tell me that a PGY6 in neurosurgery is really putzing around and wasting time and money anymore.
 
Uhhh, I don't know about MS4's, but when MS3's go home, they don't play with their dogs. There's something called SHELF EXAM, and we have to study our ass off until we go to bed. Then the next day begins.

I'm not making the argument that "residents live better lives than med students," but I assume when residents go home they don't study for anything. All they do is relaxing.
 
...if they want to fail their specialty boards

LOTS of reading in residency.

Maybe I got the wrong impression. The residents in my pediatrics rotation behave like they don't even give a damn about their annual exam. The resident I worked with was 20min late for the exam and not appeared to be in a rush at all.

Is it safe to say most P/F exams are much easier to prepare for than beat-the-curve exams such as MCAT and Step I? I know nothing about residency so correct me if I'm wrong.
 
The in-service exams may be less important, especially in early years of residency. But you still need to do a lot of reading to 1. pass oral and written boards after residency and 2. be good at your specialty. And you're not reading review books only, good residents are making their way through the thick texts as well.

The nice part is that more of the reading involves stuff you really care about.
 
Maybe I got the wrong impression. The residents in my pediatrics rotation behave like they don't even give a damn about their annual exam. The resident I worked with was 20min late for the exam and not appeared to be in a rush at all.

Is it safe to say most P/F exams are much easier to prepare for than beat-the-curve exams such as MCAT and Step I? I know nothing about residency so correct me if I'm wrong.
Depends on your career goals. If you want to do a fellowship, you should probably do a lot of reading all along. Do you want to be well-read and familiar with your field (and the one you're trying to get into) or not? Remember, as a resident, some of your decisions can be life-or-death, and you'll be an attending soon. You should know what you're doing.
 
Uhhh, I don't know about MS4's, but when MS3's go home, they don't play with their dogs. There's something called SHELF EXAM, and we have to study our ass off until we go to bed. Then the next day begins.

I'm not making the argument that "residents live better lives than med students," but I assume when residents go home they don't study for anything. All they do is relaxing.

😕

a) I didn't study that hard for the shelf exams. Certainly didn't study my ass off. I read for a couple of hours each day, but it was nothing like studying for an anatomy exam.

b) When residents go home, they DO have to study. If you read the surgery forums, the key piece of advice that they all give to new interns is, "Even though you're tired, make sure that you make time to read each day." In surgery and OB, they have to go home and read about the anatomy that they might see in the OR the next day. They have to practice their knot-tying and instrument skills. There's a lot that residents need to do at home.

Maybe I got the wrong impression. The residents in my pediatrics rotation behave like they don't even give a damn about their annual exam. The resident I worked with was 20min late for the exam and not appeared to be in a rush at all.

Yeah, I think you got the wrong impression.

I will admit that studying as an MS4 is better than studying as an MS3 - as an MS3, I had to know both the "textbook" answer as well as the "real life" answer. As an MS4, I just need to know the "real life" answer.
 
Unless your Derm, Rads, PM&R, Anesthesia...then you're pissed you're forced to do another year of medicine 🙂

I matched in rad onc, so right now I'm being forced to do another year of medicine. It's still better than being a student. But then I got a relatively benign TY.
 
I will admit that studying as an MS4 is better than studying as an MS3 - as an MS3, I had to know both the "textbook" answer as well as the "real life" answer. As an MS4, I just need to know the "real life" answer.
The M4s at my school don't have to take any exams. Most of them have three months of vacation, and other than their sub-I, most of the rotations are fairly lax. So I hear.
 
M4 exams at my school are rotation dependent.

On my ortho sub-I next month I have an exam. Ortho residents from my school said it's graded for those going into ortho and P/F for those going into anything else. One of my friends was telling me that his EM rotation had an exam worth 1/3 of his grade.

I sure studied a lot on my ortho externship... more regularly than I studied for anything else M3 year. I basically just studied for the shelf or departmental exams last year.
 
M4 exams at my school are rotation dependent.

On my ortho sub-I next month I have an exam. Ortho residents from my school said it's graded for those going into ortho and P/F for those going into anything else. One of my friends was telling me that his EM rotation had an exam worth 1/3 of his grade.

I sure studied a lot on my ortho externship... more regularly than I studied for anything else M3 year. I basically just studied for the shelf or departmental exams last year.

My med school sounds more like Ashers' than Prowler's, just a couple rotation dependent but generally easy exams. My surg sub-I gave me the option of doing an exam or a presentation; I took the presentation. And my radiology elective gave me a simple exam at the end.
 
The M4s at my school don't have to take any exams. Most of them have three months of vacation, and other than their sub-I, most of the rotations are fairly lax. So I hear.

Most non-specialty related rotations are fairly lax.

But for the ones that are related to your field, you definitely have to work hard. And you definitely have to read a lot.

I agree with Ashers - in MS3, I studied for the shelf exams. In MS4, I study for daily scrutiny by the residents and attendings. So it's different, but not necessarily less stressful at this point.
 
In MS4, I study for daily scrutiny by the residents and attendings.

The residents I've worked with seem to do this as well, on top of whatever they are studying for specialty exams, step 3, etc. Additionally, quite a few residents are expected to show up prepared to talk with med students on certain topics, give morning conference and journal club presentations and the like. It sure seems like they still have stuff to do when they leave for the day. And medicine, like law, is a career where you never can just decide "I know everything I need, I'm done learning and can just concentrate on practice". New developments, studies etc happen all the time that will impact your practice. You are expected to be up on these. Moreso probably today than the past because patients have access to the internet and will actually show up knowing whatever snippets are publically digestible and will have far more sophisticated questions than in years past. Expect a career of homework in medicine.
 
Also, an efficient resident can pass a little of the studying down to...guess who?

Two example conversations between med student and resident:

Resident: "So, M3, how does.......?"
Student: "I don't know."
Resident: "Go home tonight and look it up, then present it tomorrow on rounds."

Student: "So, I was curious about how...."
Resident (doesn't know): "That's a great question. Go home tonight and look it up, then present it tomorrow on rounds."

I've heard some good-sport residents and attendings have us take a turn pimping them, but it hasn't happened for me yet.
 
Also, an efficient resident can pass a little of the studying down to...guess who?

Two example conversations between med student and resident:

Resident: "So, M3, how does.......?"
Student: "I don't know."
Resident: "Go home tonight and look it up, then present it tomorrow on rounds."

Student: "So, I was curious about how...."
Resident (doesn't know): "That's a great question. Go home tonight and look it up, then present it tomorrow on rounds."

I've heard some good-sport residents and attendings have us take a turn pimping them, but it hasn't happened for me yet.
I don't mind making little presentations or looking things up on my own, but sometimes I feel like I'll learn something best if they just tell me as we're looking right at it. If you want to do that, you have to add enough variables to the question that they can't just ask you to look it up. :meanie: "So, in light of this patient's constellation of symptoms, how much would you expect this variable to change after we perform these two interventions?"
 
The attendings I've worked with have no problem saying "I really don't know. Look it up and teach me tomorrow."

I'm not bothered by it at all. Today's knowledge about medicine is so huge, that even though you are a specialist, you still don't know a lot of things in your field.
 
One of our attendings:
Attending: "What percent of patients is/has ________ in our patient population?" (I can't remember what it was today, perhaps the percentage of pts with x disease also having aseptic meningitis as determined by LP)...."What? You don't know? I want you to review all the records in the hospital and create a study to determine the answer."

Thank god he didn't point to me for this one, that would have sucked on the LAST day of my rotation!!!
 
One of our attendings:
Attending: "What percent of patients is/has ________ in our patient population?" (I can't remember what it was today, perhaps the percentage of pts with x disease also having aseptic meningitis as determined by LP)...."What? You don't know? I want you to review all the records in the hospital and create a study to determine the answer."

Thank god he didn't point to me for this one, that would have sucked on the LAST day of my rotation!!!
the attending was probably making a presentation on the topic and had totally forgotten to analyze that data, so he foisted off the task to someone more helpless.
 
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