Hippocrates In San Diego

Whew!

If you are looking at my posts closely you’ll notice that it’s been quite a while since my last (thanks for the nudge, joe positive). I just finished a 14-day stint on the wards. I’m still surprised how my life continues to revolve around an artifical lunar calendar. As a resident, my assignments always depended on the month. My schedule might have included spending July in the Intensive Care Unit, August on the General Medicine wards, September on the Nephrology consult service, etc. I lived and breathed by the month. This month was hard, that month was cake. I thought that would all come to an end when I finished my residency, when my “normal” life was all set to begin.

If I had taken a job in a private hospital, that would have been a reasonable assumption. But I took an faculty position at the local medical school, revolving around teaching those residents who just a few months earlier were my peers (although I did my residency in another city). So now my life is further divided: this time into two-week-long blocks. Two weeks on the wards at the central hospital, two weeks down time for academic projects and administrative responsibilities, two weeks on the wards at the suburban hospital, and on and on. This time there is less variation in my schedule. I’m either on or off service, either in the hospital or out, either teaching the students and residents or not.

Two-week blocks are much more manageable than months at a time, but are no walk in the park, either. Working 14 days in a row is hard no matter what job you do; when it’s rather high-stress medical ward service, where you’re taking care of as many as 20 very sick patients in the hospital each day, it can be vomit-inducing. When I’m “on service” I probably average about 6 to 7 hours of sleep a night (insufficient for me), less sleep on every fourth night when my team is on call, and 10 to 12 hours a day are spent in the hospital rounding with the residents, seeing all of the patients, and dealing with the many issues that invariably pop up when immersed in the workings of a university healthcare system. I am the happiest man in the Southwest when those 14 days come to an end; I don’t think I’ve ever slept so comfortably as I do on that last night of a 2-week service stint. Still, it’s better than being a resident. Spending each night in my own bed is infinitely more restful than being awake and working in the hospital every 4th night.

Image courtesy CartoonStock.com.