Once, when I was a senior resident covering a busy trauma service at a county hospital, I was on call for nine days in a row while my co-chief had an uncovered vacation. It was July, and we were all — interns, junior residents, and me — new and uncertain in our roles. I left the hospital only twice in those nine days.
When I finally signed over my pager for …
I glanced at my watch before responding to the pager. It was almost 2 a.m., with the end of my 24-hour call as the in-house surgery resident still dangerously far away. The page was for a new consult from the medical service, on a patient with necrotizing pancreatitis. Apparently, she had been in the hospital for over a month, in and out of the ICU with multiple drain placements, and …
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