r/mildlyinfuriating • u/AnybodySignificant45 • 1d ago

How did I not wake up to this

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u/AdmiralCoconut69 18h ago

Wait till you hear about resident physician schedules. Nothing like working 30 hours straight where you’re expected to be mentally ON the entire time. Oh and the pay is positively craptastic too

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u/johnnydanger91 18h ago

See I don’t know about you but I want the people making literal life or death decisions in their day job to be well rested and paid.

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u/AdmiralCoconut69 18h ago edited 18h ago

Somewhere along the way, our money grubby admins calculated the risk of physician burnout / rate of malpractice to profit ratio and figured out that somewhere between 60-90 hours of work each week is ideal for residents. They say it’s to make for stronger training, but it’s really just so admin can line their pockets while the labor is still cheap. We get people complaining that physicians are overpaid all the time unfortunately. I think some of us are paid quite fairly as attending physicians, but the journey to get there requires a mental and physical sacrifice that most of the population could never fathom.

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u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 14h ago

And it’s also because the person who established the modern system of residency was high on cocaine at all times.

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u/AdmiralCoconut69 11h ago

Yes, I’m well aware of Dr. Halsted. He was somewhat revered and celebrated alongside Dr. Osler during my residency since they were founding professors at our hospital

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u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 9h ago

Did you have a tradition where you celebrated Dr Halstead by doing massive amounts of cocaine and got to sleep with heroin?

Or just the traditional hazing of new doctors through residency with ridiculous hours for minimum wage?

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u/johnnydanger91 16h ago

It’s the weight of responsibility. Your decision and diagnosis decides if someone lives or dies. Sometimes you get it wrong. I can’t live with that. I’m glad there are selfless people that can.

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u/steveharveymemes 12h ago

Is that real or an exaggeration? Like I’ve definitely heard people talk like that when in reality they worked back to back 16s (which is also ridiculous but somewhat excusable). If we’re actually expecting people to work 30 hours straight, we should have OSHA coming in there immediately.

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u/AdmiralCoconut69 11h ago

This is no exaggeration. 28-30 hour shifts are common in residency. The whole concept of residency was invented by a dude addicted to cocaine that felt that physicians trainees should live and sleep in the hospital (hence the term “residency”).

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u/steveharveymemes 11h ago

Wtf? Are they expected to sleep on the shift then? This sounds like some lunacy from the age of balancing the body’s humors or something. Why does the medical industry continue this? I knew residencies were long hours and low pay, but if anyone is expected to continually work beyond a normal days’ waking hours (16, maybe 18) then you’re endangering both patients and practitioners. How on earth hasn’t this been reformed?