what happens if you oversleep?

[Tired]

1) Its kinda disrespectful

I find it unlikely that the good Lord considers providing sancutuary to a weary physicians "disrespectful".

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[AF_PedsBoy]

As a corollary on some of those old posts, med students and residents are chronically sleep deprived, and the soft-call diagnoses like "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" can not be made if there is an alternate etiology LIKE BEING SLEEP DEPRIVED! Sleeping more or earlier is nice, but when your schedule is like mine where you have about 3-4 hours of awake time free between shifts (assuming 5-6 hours of sleepy time) it's tough to sacrifice those hours when you need to cram dinner, tv, and studying (in that order of priority mind you) in. So with that in mind here's what I do

I have a alarm clock, a cell phone with one alarm, and another cell phone with three alarms to wake me up, plus or minus the pager at bedside. Make sure they are out of reach in different parts of the room, and set them ten minutes apart - from experience it takes me a few minutes to realize it's going off, turn it off, and then go unconscious, so five minutes apart is about as useful as one alarm- if it didn't wake you up the first time it ain't going to do it until you naturally wake up. In this hospital it helps to clip the pager on your collar, glasses if you wear em, etc. Turn the alarm off to shut it up then turn it back on- being sleep deprived tends to run the risk of falling asleep at times before getting around to turning it back on at night

And of course practice good sleep hygeine - if you're pounding caffeine before going to bed it'll be harder to get to sleep, you may wake up more, and in general is an all around bad idea. No caffeine 3-4 hours prior to beddy bye time. It goes without saying alcohol even if you're not getting intoxicated will disrupt your sleep cycle too. Try to get to sleep at roughly the same time. Have a morning routine; I sleep walk over to my coffee machine, wash up while it's brewing, then stagger over to get the coffee, by which time I can at least keep my eyes open to see where the coffee is to get the first stim of the day.

And I'm not surprised psychiatrists are refusing to prescribe speed for sleepiness secondary to sleep deprivation- that's just a lawsuit waiting to happen

Good luck on clinical rotations- I, at least, have the worst diet, am chronically sleep deprived, never exercise, and half the time have missed some bill or another because the damn bank is always closed on Sunday which is my one day off, but dammit at least I can tell my patients I know how bad their health can get if they do these things! (not that I necessarily tell them it's from PERSONAL experience mind you)

 

[AF_PedsBoy]

P.S. They SAY they're supposed to provide sleeping quarters for residents and/or med students but at least four or five times as an intern I've had to sleep in the workroom/lounge/patient playroom (hey peds patients aren't awake at 2AM...) or floor of the call room because there aren't enough beds... Just slide down in the chair so your head is at the chair's back and prop your feet up on the sink/copier/desk/med student sleeping on the floor/etc and you're golden!

 

[Blade28]

P.S. They SAY they're supposed to provide sleeping quarters for residents and/or med students but at least four or five times as an intern I've had to sleep in the workroom/lounge/patient playroom (hey peds patients aren't awake at 2AM...) or floor of the call room because there aren't enough beds... Just slide down in the chair so your head is at the chair's back and prop your feet up on the sink/copier/desk/med student sleeping on the floor/etc and you're golden!

At least you get to sleep on many of your call nights.

 

[LadyWolverine]

I know many hospitals do not have rules about call for students, but they are setting themselves up for MAJOR liability if they are requiring you to take call until 1 am, get in your car and drive home only to return 4 hrs later.

A few students getting into accidents (Or worse) shouldn't have to happen. Since you live in an area with snow and ice, this is a very real possibility when they require sleepy students to get out on the road to go home.

Not only would driving while exhausted be an issue, but for students who live and/or work in urban areas (e.g. Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC) the likelihood of being involved in a crime would increase if students were trying to get home from the hospital at 1am, or to the hospital at 5am. It seems rather silly that your institution's hospital is trying to dodge liability issues by creating new ones. But I guess that happens a lot nowadays.

 

[Blade28]

As an intern, we do a month of ER. Many of my (and my coresidents') shifts were 5 pm - 3 am. Imagine walking back to your car at 3 am. Our county hospital is NOT located in a safe area.

 

[LadyWolverine]

As an intern, we do a month of ER. Many of my (and my coresidents') shifts were 5 pm - 3 am. Imagine walking back to your car at 3 am. Our county hospital is NOT located in a safe area.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Although the UMB campus is pretty safe, students and residents have to rotate in many Baltimore-area hospitals. I hope that all of the hospitals where I will be working will provide a place to crash so that we don't have to leave at some ridunculous hour in the morning. Otherwise, I'll most likely be sleeping on the cafeteria table benches.

Blade, where is your county hospital?

OP: Sorry for not contributing to your topic. I have problems getting up sometimes, too. I started putting my phone in the shower, on the loud ring + vibrate, and setting the alarm. Now, when it goes off, it makes this horendous noise sitting on the floor of my tub. By the time I reach it to turn it off, I figure, I'm already in the tub, I might as well turn on the water. Of course, be careful - once I forgot to take off my jammies before pulling the stop valve.

If you're not a morning-shower type person, you could also try hiding it behind the toilet. By the time your reach you phone, you might as well take a leak, since you're already at the toilet and practically have your face in it.

 

[Blade28]

Blade, where is your county hospital?

Grady Memorial Hospital, downtown Atlanta.

 

[pillowhead]

Grady Memorial Hospital, downtown Atlanta.

Just came off my ER rotation there. Evening shift is 6pm to 4am so you're walking outisde around 4:30am in a definitely sketchy area. I'm just waiting to hear of someone getting mugged or worse in the parking deck.

Of course at 4:30am, the surgery residents are just wandering in to start their day so we wave to each other as we briskly walk by the homeless guys trying to get their zzz's.

Thank goodness that month is over.

 

[tony montana]

Aaah, no rest for the wicked , heh. At least I am in good company. King David was certainly considered disrespectful when he ate the blessed shew bread on the Sabbath. But as Jesus said; the Sabbath is made for the benefit of man, man was not made for the benefit of the Sabbath.

Owned!!

you know your bible...

 

[Myempire1]

In college, I used to put my alarm clock in a birdcage with a small lock on it. This way, I couldn't turn it off while half-asleep. It worked great, but my roommates hated the sound of me fighting with metal in the AM.

At the moment, I don't have call but am in the hospital from 3am to 7pm daily and then the library till maybe 10 or 11. So the birdcage, may be coming out again soon...... Especially when I start q3 o/n call trauma in a week.

Speaking of zzzz's hmmm maybe I should go to bed now.

 

[hale-bopp]

Another suggestion... since over the course of my third year, several of my colleagues, I , and even a couple of interns overslept once. It happens to (almost) everyone at some point. Assuming your school is full of nice people, and not crazy insane gunners (mine is), and that you live reasonably close to the hospital, if you exchange phone numbers with your classmate and/or sub-I, if you don't show up to pre-round, they can call to check on you (and call back if you don't answer) to find out why slash wake you up. In my experience, the residents and fellows were just happy to know that whoever was okay and wanted to make sure that it looked like everything was running smoothly for the attendings (so the attendings never knew about the oversleeping). anyway, it's not a good day to day plan, but it is a good backup/ in case of emergency plan that my classmates and I used multiple times throughout the year.

 

[Blade28]

Just came off my ER rotation there. Evening shift is 6pm to 4am so you're walking outisde around 4:30am in a definitely sketchy area. I'm just waiting to hear of someone getting mugged or worse in the parking deck.

Of course at 4:30am, the surgery residents are just wandering in to start their day so we wave to each other as we briskly walk by the homeless guys trying to get their zzz's.

Thank goodness that month is over.

Yeah. NOT a safe area.

 

[ttac]

Discovered this website a month ago...
you can schedule phone calls to your cell phone/land line.

for example, last night when I was on call, our hospital uses portable phones (that you can dial into from outside) and so I set my phone call for 4am when I went to sleep at 3:10am...

worked like a charm.

http://www.wakerupper.com/