Posts Tagged ‘sleep’

Even though a blog is often the writer’s soap box… that’s not what I’m going to do with this particular subject. I’m just pointing it out for med students, interns, and residents… just to be aware that there are even more changes being discussed in resident work-hour reform. I want to suggest that you reserve judgment. Here’s why…

It’s easy to think about yourself in the short-term and think, “Heck yeah! I want to limit my work hours!” But be careful, there are definite pros and cons. And we are talking about a dynamic system here.

Part of being remarkable in your profession is your ability to “see systems”. You should know that one tweak in one part of the system may have profound implications in other parts of the system. And in this “me world” you might miss the effects on other parts. And in this “right now world” you might miss, even, the longer-term implications for yourself.

But I’m not going to go there right now. (RookieDoc members – I’ll teach you how to overcome the cons with a whole separate bonus module…) Just keeping you informed here by linking to an interesting article and an interesting blog post. Check them out.

• Does More Sleep Make for Better Doctors?
• Consequences of Limiting Resident Work Hours

By the way, if you’re on Twitter, you may want to follow “kevinmd” too… he’s got a lot of great insights.

You’re on-call and it’s three in the morning. You get called from the ER and you call them back from your call room, because you had just laid down. You’ll find that it’s almost like they have a direct connection to your pillow. As soon as your head hits that pillow, they’ll call you.

You call back and they see the in-house caller ID “resident call room” and the ER doc says, “Whoa! Dr. Tori, trying to get some sleep? Trying to rest your head? Why don’t you come on down? I have a few admissions for you.”

Great. That kind of stuff starts to tick you off after awhile. The first few times you’re like sure and you head on down. The next few times you start to get the idea that people think you’re a slacker because you’re in your call room.

Well, here’s the thing… (more…)