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Monday, November 25, 2002That fact--that unflappable, recalcitrant individualism and the willful internalization of responsibility that comes with it--was reiterated to me again and again by residents. Most residents in Derek's position couldn't imagine transferring the task to another doctor in the middle of the night. In mid-June, when Ferguson convened a meeting with the resident surgeons at MGH to talk about the reduced work hours, he half-expected them to be overjoyed about the cuts. Instead, he said triumphantly, "Many of them were just indignant." Residents complained bitterly about work hours, but, when push came to shove, they could not bring themselves to pass off work to others. In other words, at least part of the reason for the work-hour crisis actually lay in the culture of medicine itself--a culture that had evolved for nearly 100 years. New York has had limitations on residency hours for over ten years now. I did my residency training there, the first year that they implemented them, and I honestly can’t say it was detrimental to my education. When we were on call, we went home the next morning after we had finished rounding on our patients. We worked in teamsr, and signed our patients over to the person who was on call for that day. After a while, we were all pretty familiar with one another’s patients. The number of patients we could be responsible for was limited to fifteen, and the number of admissions in one night were limited to six. It was a humane system, and it didn't deprive me of the privilege of learning to think well while fatigued. Most of us rarely spent more than 28 hours at the hospital. Senior residents told me that before that, they used to be in the hospital for well over thirty-six hours trying to get their work done. Everyone was pretty pleased with it - except the surgical residents. They were always complaining that it deprived them of needed cases and experience. Looks like things are no different in Massachusetts. posted by Sydney on 11/25/2002 07:42:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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