Edwin Leap on the night shift. Well said:
It’s time for night-workers to be treated, not as second-class citizens, but as the first class professionals they are, taking one for the team night after night so that everyone else can rest. It’s time for night shift, already perilous enough, to stop being the entry level job for he inexperienced until they earn’something better.’ It’s time for us to recognize that medicine doesn’t stop at 11 PM and resume at 7 AM. People are sick and wounded and dying and broken at every hour of the day and night. And the nurses and doctors and all the rest who care for them are struggling to do their best with less rest, less help and more criticism than anyone else.
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- The shift worker mentality
- Specialist shortages in the emergency room
- Night float
- That’s the way an ER shift is supposed to go
- A patient pretends to be an ER worker
- Resident physicians, medicine’s last hope?
- Working for big groups
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{ 3 comments }
While you are at it, why not turn out the lights and let the patient’s rest. It is bad enough that the doctors starve and avoid patients, but also have them awakened at ridiculous hours for the lab results to be available over MD coffee.
What is worse than the night shift? Try 24/7 beepers going off, rushing to the hospital-no shifts, just always “the doctor”. I did it for a while but never again. It nearly killed me and did irreparable harm. Cured me of taking call altogether. Office hours only.
anon 1:47… well said. And when the medical code in your room goes off at 2AM, I’ll just hang back in the call room bed, satisfied knowing I was only acceeding to your wishes.
Jackass.
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