The economy affecting pediatrics

[ZekeMD]

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Sorry, I deleted the post for privacy reasons

 

[BigNavyPedsGuy]

That sucks! So far, the military side of things has been unaffected by the economy.

Is there a way to say which program without outing yourself?

 

[J-Rad]

The economy is taking its toll on many hospital systems across the country. The system I am training in (the state's quarternary care center) is certainly being affected by it. The Peds residency and fellowships are not being affected in the same way as yours but are not untouched.

 

[TexasRose]

So there has been a lot going on in our peds department, that I am attributing to the economy, but I wanted to see if similar situations were developing elsewhere.

I am a resident at a state hospital where a large majority of patients are covered by medicaid and there is a large amount of charity care that is performed. Recently, many of the attendings have been fired/let go/contracts not renewed etc. There are a total of 6-7 pediatric attendings (both specialty and general) that will be leaving the department. This seems to be at the expense of resident workload. Since there are fewer attendings, they will be merging inpatient teams and thereby increasing resident workload. We already go over work hours on a regular basis. The department has asked the hospital for help and they have offered none. 👎

Does anyone have any similar situations? Any advice, recommendations???

Wow, that really stinks. I'm sorry to hear that residents are having to bear the burden here.

I don't know how the economy is affecting my primary hospital, but I am unaware of any job losses related to it. However, I'm at a very large program and it would take a big change for anything to be noticed on a day to day workload basis for us. My program is practically obsessed with maintaining duty hours. Violations are pretty rare.

 

[ZekeMD]

That sucks! So far, the military side of things has been unaffected by the economy.

Is there a way to say which program without outing yourself?

Sorry, I'm not going to tell you which program as I do not want to cast a negative impression. Overall I love it here and feel I am receiving excellent training, but these events have me disturbed a bit.