DFW Sports, Music and More: For Dr. Leroy

Friday, June 15, 2007

For my friend, Dr. Injun Love Leroy:

I don't go to the doctor much and there aren't too many surprises in this article, but hey, it's at least interesting.

At 2:10 PM, Anonymous said...: Best quote from the article:

"The way we used to train physicians is that you worked all the time. You were on call all the time. Medicine was holy work—a calling. It was a privilege and an honor—you should sacrifice everything. Everything else came second. It didn’t matter if you didn’t eat during the day, it didn’t matter if you didn’t sleep. Now, the thinking is, if people don’t sleep they make mistakes, and if they make mistakes it’s bad for the hospital. So residents are being taught medicine as a career choice as opposed to a profession, a calling. They’re being taught as shift workers, which I think is a huge problem."

There is definitely a trend toward shift work and better hours for physicians, but residents still work their tails off. This guy clearly is old school. The law now limits resident hours to 80 hours a week. That's still a ridiculous number considering our pay. And a lot of places, the residents are lying about their work hours to keep the powers that be happy even if they are exceeding 80 hours.