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Sleep is more important than food

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Re: Sleep is more important than food

#81

Post by mv »

pyre wrote: post #49
mjfern wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more disconcerting is the sleeping culture/routine throughout medical residency and fellowship; arguably, the most important stages of medical education, where doctors in training learn the hands-on skills to practice medicine. Despite the importance of learning during this stage, individuals are routinely sleep-deprived: "20% of all residents reported sleeping an average of 5 hours or less per night, with 66% a…

To some extent the sleep deprivation is a weeding process/learning experience in and of itself. Being able to perform under stress/lack of sleep is a good quality in a doctor.

I am a 3rd year in medical school, and firmly believe that sleep deprivation is a terrible weeding process. If a doctor is sleep deprived I do not want them touching me with a ten foot pole. They make enough mistakes as it is! Sure you argue that they limit work hours, but I can tell you first hand that these limits are only paid lip service to, and I routinely see residents work 80+ (sometimes 90+) hours a week. Oh and the max shift is 16 hours now so calculate out how you get to 80+ hours. You can't report your program because they will lose accreditation and you'd have to go somewhere else to get this scam of being 'board certified', and you can't really threaten because your program can find a reason to dispose of you. real big catch-22.

(just for kicks, if you worked 10hour days for 7 days a week that is only 70 hour work week... doctors work at least 12 hour days, and usually 16 hour days to get to the full 80 hours!)

Oh and as far as weeding out?

Most 'weeding' out happens first and second year of medical school. In my class alone about 10% of the class failed first year exams, and they were forced to repeat or retake the whole year. (which SUCKS when you just paid $37,000 for a year of school that meant nothing). Then Second year weeding happens again with STEP1 licensing exam:

"Overall pass rates for first time USMLE Step 1 test takers are: 92% for U.S. M.D. medical school graduates, 81% for U.S. D.O. osteopathic medical school graduates, and 73% for international medical school graduates" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Medical_Licensing...

Fail a year or a board exams? You pretty much can only be a psychiatrist or family doctor with little or no hope of every specializing.

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#82

Post by jokermatt999 »

pstuart wrote: post #76
webuiarchitect wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you. This place is slowly growing into another Reddit with more junk crowd joining in regularly.

Not to be too snarky, but your profile shows you've been a member for less than a year -- complaining about the "new kids" is rather ironic.

That's actually called out specifically in the guidelines, even.

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

I don't think being defensive of quality is a bad thing though. It's often unnecessary, but I'd say that's better than being under-cautious.

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#83

Post by tedunangst »

makmanalp wrote: post #54
dkarl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they should have gone somewhere else where they had time to sleep and think instead of just studying all the time. I know that where I work, the folks who are willing to grind the hardest on assigned work are rarely the ones you turn to for difficult and responsible work. The very best people are the ones who work extremely hard at self-directed work and sometimes push back against assigned work, but they are…

I can't agree with this more. However, whenever I refuse to do work I get stamped on the forehead with "lazy". For example, I figure out that the homework in a class is 25% the grade but there are 25 of them, so each is worth 1%. I understand the topic so I figure that it's a waste of my 4 hours to do the work for 1% extra. Bam, "you're so lazy".

Where does this lazy stamp actually land? Surely your school doesn't actually put a little (* lazy) on your transcript? You seem to know you're not lazy and there's no way the lazy stamp is actually going to be transmitted to anybody who cares, so why do you care?

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#84

Post by gaius »

esoteriq wrote: post #75
pyre wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent the sleep deprivation is a weeding process/learning experience in and of itself. Being able to perform under stress/lack of sleep is a good quality in a doctor.

Does it have to be? There are only 133 Medical Schools in the U.S. and there is a marked shortage of doctors in some areas, most notably general family doctors. The only area that learning how to deal with sleep deprivation would be a benefit is surgery and critical care areas (ICUs). But then again, if you could schedule things better and get more doctors in, maybe these doctors don't have to learn how to function o…

The shortage is purely artificial; the AMA keeps a cap on numbers to make sure pay stays high.

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#85

Post by eavc »

orijing wrote: post #53

Something I observed from reading the comments here: A lot of us can function on much fewer hours of sleep regularly and don't believe it adversely affects our performance (It does affect mine though). Does anyone think there may be some selection going on here? What I mean is, perhaps it's true that HN's distribution is more skewed toward the side of people who need less sleep (and hence has more productive hours in…

Can function or can function optimally?

Some research shows that mood is impacted more drastically than function. Since burnout and perseverance are such key topics (and emotionally dependent ones), maybe heroic sleep deprivation is an under-recognized threat to entrepreneurial success.

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#87

Post by tastybites »

makmanalp wrote: post #54
dkarl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they should have gone somewhere else where they had time to sleep and think instead of just studying all the time. I know that where I work, the folks who are willing to grind the hardest on assigned work are rarely the ones you turn to for difficult and responsible work. The very best people are the ones who work extremely hard at self-directed work and sometimes push back against assigned work, but they are…

I can't agree with this more. However, whenever I refuse to do work I get stamped on the forehead with "lazy". For example, I figure out that the homework in a class is 25% the grade but there are 25 of them, so each is worth 1%. I understand the topic so I figure that it's a waste of my 4 hours to do the work for 1% extra. Bam, "you're so lazy".

So what if they call you lazy? Are you going to stop getting invited to the parties they are too busy studying to go to?

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#88

Post by kscaldef »

cj wrote: post #23
kscaldef wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those schools have cultures that promote such behavior. I was a grad student and TA at Caltech and observed that the undergrads had horrible time management skills. Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm. (I'm not specifically picking on Caltech undergrads, BTW. I'm fairly sure this is typical at most schools.)

If you want to have a life outside of school (job, side projects, social life) it's very hard to stay ahead of work without losing sleep even with excellent time management. Certain classes are worse than others and it doesn't usually depend on the content of the course, but the people teaching it. I'd blame the culture of the faculty above the school, although the school likely influences said culture.

Very few Caltech students have jobs.

The faculty contributed from what I could see, but primarily in indulging procrastination by students. It was quite common for students to hand in the majority of a terms problem sets in the last week, and the professors would accept them even if there was a stated class policy that late assignments would not receive credit. (Of course, I acknowledge that this was particularly onerous to me, because I would be the one who then had to grade a full term worth of assignments in a week.)

Re: Sleep is more important than food

#89

Post by joe_the_user »

gaius wrote: post #84
esoteriq wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be? There are only 133 Medical Schools in the U.S. and there is a marked shortage of doctors in some areas, most notably general family doctors. The only area that learning how to deal with sleep deprivation would be a benefit is surgery and critical care areas (ICUs). But then again, if you could schedule things better and get more doctors in, maybe these doctors don't have to learn how to function o…

The shortage is purely artificial; the AMA keeps a cap on numbers to make sure pay stays high.

Yes it is. Of course hazing/weeding processes are the means used to achieve this.
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