Doctors should only have to work like 5 hours a day but should still get paid large amounts of money.
It's important that the people responsible for our health are well rested and well-rewarded.
No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
31–40 of 208 posts
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#32Do doctors and nurses get paid by the hour? If not, they should be, with double or even triple pay for overtime.
That would get penny pinching administrators to stop overworking their medical staff.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#33The medical system will disagree: all doctors should work 30 hours straight with no sleep, else they're not real doctors and slacking off.
You have people that have gone through the ringer to become doctors. These are the type of people that when you say jump, they ask how high. You can pretty much get them to do anything you want... because they are self-selected to be that sort of people otherwise they could have never become doctors. So when a manager comes to them and tells them they have to work so and so hours, they do it. And they suck it up, bec…
This is not true. A doctor is a person who is extremely motivated by money but was too uncreative to come up with their own path for getting there.
They suck it up because its going to allow them to buy their 3rd summer beach house. Not because they are genuinely better people.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#34The culture of medicine, at least at the physician level, is completely insane; it's so insane that describing its insanity is part of the reason I wrote "Why you should become a nurse or physicians assistant instead of a doctor: the underrated perils of medical school" ( https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-n... ). Residents in particular have no power, and even physicians themselves frequently…
My wife's a second-year resident and it's pretty unbelievable how hard and how much they work. She's on her 18th straight day of working long days during the week and long nights during the weekend. Legally there's an 80-hour per week cap, but no resident would ever complain. They do 24 hour shifts, but never 30 hour ones, though other programs at her hospital do.
I felt upset about her hours all through medical school only to discover residency is worse. There are no fellows in her program either so the residents handle it all. I feel I've just accepted her terrible schedule at this point. I'm most saddened that we won't be able to have children for another five years until she's completed her fellowship, especially because I'm in my mid-30s.
Writing this comment makes me realize how painful it feels at times that her medical training runs our lives.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
But nurses are no different. We need to start addressing the leading cause of medical accidents - physicians/nurses sleep deprivation.
they are completely different. Where I work in cali nurses are full time working 3 or 4 twelve hour shifts a week. Overtime optional and highly compensated. medical residents will routinely do back to back 24 hour shifts with no sleep and even the ICU attendings will do a week of every other day 24 hour shifts. The 16 hour rule only applies to interns. Once you reach second year the rule is 80 hours a week averaged o…
In my experience, you are absolutely correct. I dated a nurse for a while and later married a doctor, and it was completely different. Physician training is absolutely, terrifyingly demanding.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#36Didn't they do a study and find that decreasing doctor hours caused an increase in patient mortality because of handoff errors? And that digitizing records didn't help because of a combination of inaccurate measurement by the staff and because of factors that can't be measured (intuitive observation, etc).
I wonder if they could work in a napping system that compensates for the lost sleep. Several 45 minutes naps can do a lot if they are working 30 hours straight.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
they are completely different. Where I work in cali nurses are full time working 3 or 4 twelve hour shifts a week. Overtime optional and highly compensated. medical residents will routinely do back to back 24 hour shifts with no sleep and even the ICU attendings will do a week of every other day 24 hour shifts. The 16 hour rule only applies to interns. Once you reach second year the rule is 80 hours a week averaged o…
I was forced to do 100 hours a week for a company that had a sadistic culture of over work, you never get anything done, under those kind of hours unless you're doing stimulant drugs your brain just shuts down. I wonder how many doctors are also drug addicts just to make this kind of work intensity physically possible even?
I'm surrounded by doctors and I don't know any that abuse drugs, other than alcohol and maybe weed. I believe they are just so busy and so overworked that they are constantly moving around / doing paperwork. The demands of the job keep them going.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#38The culture of medicine, at least at the physician level, is completely insane; it's so insane that describing its insanity is part of the reason I wrote "Why you should become a nurse or physicians assistant instead of a doctor: the underrated perils of medical school" ( https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-n... ). Residents in particular have no power, and even physicians themselves frequently…
But nurses are no different. We need to start addressing the leading cause of medical accidents - physicians/nurses sleep deprivation.
I know of no nurses that work this schedule, even voluntarily (overtime, swaps).
Nursing in many states is challenged by unsafely high patient:staff ratios, excessive documentation requirements (on extremely slow user interfaces), and the need to vigorously double-check physician's orders (dangerous drug interactions, over-dosages, etc).
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#39Do doctors and nurses get paid by the hour? If not, they should be, with double or even triple pay for overtime. That would get penny pinching administrators to stop overworking their medical staff.
Nurses, quite frequently yes. Physician reimbursement can be incredibly complicated depending on type of work.
Re: No Doctor Should Work 30 Hours Straight with No Sleep
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was forced to do 100 hours a week for a company that had a sadistic culture of over work, you never get anything done, under those kind of hours unless you're doing stimulant drugs your brain just shuts down. I wonder how many doctors are also drug addicts just to make this kind of work intensity physically possible even?
I'm surrounded by doctors and I don't know any that abuse drugs, other than alcohol and maybe weed. I believe they are just so busy and so overworked that they are constantly moving around / doing paperwork. The demands of the job keep them going.
You must have never met psychiatrists then; never seen otherpeople take drug usage so lightly.