So, you may be wondering why I'm writing about this subject since Stephen is not a first year resident yet. Well, the past couple of weeks he's been on his Asvanced Family Medicine rotation which is the only residency program here in Tallahassee, so instead of him working directly under a seasoned physician, he's working under residents who in turn answer to an attending.
Anyway, two things have been brought to my attention in the past couple weeks. Being on-call sucks and there are first-year residents who don't know squat. Those two things are really scary to me. First, being on-call for Stephen has been very frustrating to me in the past couple weeks because even though it's only be twice a week, it was scheduled very close together the first week which ended up running into this week. Like last week he was on call Thurs. and Sat. Oh, and for those of you who don't know, his on-call hours are 8am-8am. And even though his rotation may start at 8am he'll obviously get there early in case he needs to rounds, etc. and even though his shift ends the next morning at 8am, that doesn't mean he'll leave right at 8am due to a number of reasons. So, as I was saying, he was on-call Thurs and Sat. last week and then on-call again this week on Monday and will be on-call again tomorrow. Thankfully his on-call day on Monday was nice becaues things were slow and the resident he was with sent him home around lunch and he didn't have to be back until 5pm so he could do rounds on patients and check-in with the new attending that was coming on duty. And then came home around 10:00pm, instead of staying overnight. This was vastly different from his first week when he was working with a resident who, um...I don't know how to say this lightly, but, pretty much needs to be back in medical school, or maybe just not be a doctor at all. He is very disorganized in the sense that he doesn't know how to manage his time to get things done in a certain amount of time. He's also very unsure of himself. If he would fake some confidence, I'm sure it would help him immensely! Anyway, I just felt really bad for Stephen last week because he wasn't learning anything and at times was teaching himself!! There were a lot of slow times which he did nothing and Ella and I would come visit him.
So, my point in blogging about this is to vent my frustation in the facts that I've mentioned above because it's really scary to think that all doctors aren't on the same level and it's also scary to think that Stephen is going into surgery which requires a lot more time on-call and away from home in general the Family Medicine. And after this year, being on-call will definitely not be like this year in the sense that Ella and I can go visit him OR that he'll be able to come home if it's slow. It's also going to be real hard for me to keep my mouth shut when I hear about interns who just shouldn't be doctors or are just incompetent in their areas. I'm assuming that since surgery is so competitive it'll be a lot different than Family Medicine in little ol' Tallahassee, FL. But, then, if stereo-types are right, you get to deal with arrogant pricks in surgery residencies.
Wow, this has turned into a lot of rambling. I'm sorry for that. Just needed to vent.
No comments:
Post a Comment