My one month in hell is over. I just finished my pre-residency training, and I got accepted to the 2007 residency training program in surgery--- by default, i guess. There are 15 slots, and only 14 of us were left in the end. I was witnessing natural selection before my very eyes. The rest have already quit early on... sometimes I wonder if what they did was the better option. For one month, I've had a glimpse of the future, and it seems very grim.
I knew it would be really tiring, but I never expected it to be this tiring. And I never expected the schedule to be--- impractical. inefficient. unphysiologic. The schedule was unbelievable, I wonder if it's the same in other government hospitals. First day, we have to report by 4 AM to do our early morning rounds. We have to finish by 630 AM because the first cases for operation are scheduled at that time. 2 hours seem enough, but it's difficult if you have a lot of post-op patients, you have to inspect, clean, and dress all of their wounds. Plus, there's this constant urge to squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep at that time, so you'd want to finish before 6 AM. During work hours, we're either in the operating room, the emergency room, or in the out patient department (clinics), which could finish as late as 8 PM. We do our rounds afterward. Some services finish their team rounds in 3 hours, but for some reason I cannot understand, my team's rounds can last for 7 hours! We usually finish our rounds at 1 AM, so that leaves 3 hours to carry out orders, since we have to start our morning rounds at 4 AM.
Then there's the every 3 days duty schedule, which is apparently only true for interns and clerks. We're practically on duty every single day. Apparently, being on duty is defined as taking all emergency operative cases (like appendectomies) during that day. There are three teams, so three duty days. We just assume different posts everyday. Tehcnically, we can go home on the third day, but since our rounds finish at 1-2 AM, I only go home to eat and take a shower. There's no time to sleep since I have to be back by 4 AM. When I'm in the hospital, I have to squeeze in time to eat in between errands, I can't take a bath so I'm wearing the same clothes for days, I become aware of how much I stink, there are days when I don't even brush my teeth, and for 1 month, I only have a maximum of 2 hours of sleep a day. and that's not straight 2 hours, that accumulative. Every now and then I can sleep for 10-15 minutes at certain times during the day, and when I add those minutes, they amount to at least an hour. In my opinion, I think they should just hire more people instead of dumping such a huge work load on a few people. If I knew my surgeon hasn't been sleeping for weeks, i wouldn't go through my operation. The first year residents look like zombies, dozing off every time they get to stay still. Next year, I'm going to be like them. It gets worse when I'm actually a first year resident. They rarely get to go home. We only got to go home because we were technically not yet employees of the hospital. On paper, first year residents are off on every third day also, but they'd be on call. But with the large amount of work, they're always on call. For one year, there's practically no time to go home. Maybe just to have quick shower--- that's it. It gets easier through the years because the work load is less for seniors, but the fact remains that a senior resident is still always on call. One senior resident who already has his own family told me he hasn't seen his daughter for almost a year. Surgery Residency is a sure fire way to ruin any relationship... which a good thing if you'd want to end relationships. Another drawback for first year residents--- Since they're already employees of the hospital, the senior residents get to treat them shabbily, almost like slaves. I'll also probably run out of money because they use their own money to buy needs for patients. The seniors get mad if an operation cannot push through because of lack of needs. You'd think they'd expect that because most patients have no money at all. They should have a team fund instead of having the first year residents pay for needs. Also, those seniors insist that they are treated to meals every time a first year resident commits even a minor mistake. With all the work load they dump on first year residents, you'd think they'd be more understandable. On the other hand, when the juniors do something good, or perform a procedure successfully, the seniors insist that the poor juniors celebrate by treating their seniors to lunch. WTF?! Either way, you can't win! Sure, the salary is higher than what I would get if I worked in a private hospital, but with all that extra spending, I'd probably get to take more money home if I worked at a private hospital instead. And the work load wouldn't be as tiring.
After a lot of thinking, i guess I can actually live like that. After a month, I got used to not taking a bath, not eating much, and not sleeping at all. I've discovered a person can actually perform his daily functions even without sleep... I don't get sleepy as long as I'm doing something, and they never seem to run out of things for us to do. I just can't tolerate some of the senior residents who were acting like Gods, cursing you and shouting at you even if you're doing nothing wrong. OR they tell you to do things that are impossible to do, then get mad at you. They're obviously using their power to make fun at you. It's even more annoying when you find out they were scum during their first year and the senior residents frequently got mad at them--- they're simply doing to us what was done to them. I can live with expletives, I don't mind if they scold me if I really did something wrong. It's those "power trippers" that really test my patience. I have no problem with authority, as long as those people don't abuse their authority. If ever I'll quit, I'm going to punch those assholes in the face first before I leave the premises.
I've been thinking about which path to take for months. After a month in preresidency, the path seems clearer. Yeah, it's going to be a really bumpy road ahead, but I can take it. I know I can live like that. But questions still cloud my mind.
Is this really how I WANT to spend the next 5 years of my life?
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