The realities of residency aren’t always pretty, but always worth it.
No one ever said residency was easy. We all know what we’re getting ourselves into when we apply for medical school, especially those of us who choose to pursue surgical specialties. Still, it amazes me how much is expected of residents each and every day. Here’s what a typical day in residency looks like:
Rising before the sun
In our first couple of hours, we’ve pre-rounded and rounded on each patient and then run the list to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Then, the senior residents head off to the O.R., and the interns return to the floor to put in orders and finalize the morning’s notes.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon are usually spent updating discharge summaries, calling consulting services and responding to phone calls from the floor. Some calls are simple and you can enter orders or answer questions remotely, but every third or fourth call requires that you go evaluate a patient.
Multitasking to the max
It generally happens that wherever you are when you get a call, the patient you have to see is halfway across the hospital, so you pick up what you’re doing and hike over. While you walk, you check the list to see if there are any phone calls you can make. This means your walk isn’t wasted time and gives you an odd sense of accomplishment.
At some point, the senior residents check in to ask for patient updates and run the list again. Then it’s back to the grind. More phone calls, more trips from one end of the hospital to the other, more paperwork, and best of all, post-op checks for all the cases that have happened for the day.
Moving down the list
You keep chugging along, marking items off your list and moving on to the next task. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you look down at your list and stare in amazement that you’ve got no empty check boxes. You think to yourself, “What did I forget to do?” and spend a few minutes racking your brain because there’s no way you got everything done.
Then you realize it’s nearly the end of the day and time for your night float resident to take over. So, you really don’t get a break, you just get to transition to the next phase of the day—update the list. You update it as best you can so the night float resident has an idea what’s gone on and what the team’s plan is so he or she can answer any number of random questions from the floor overnight.
Ready to crash
Once I get home, I’m so exhausted and hungry that I only have time (and all I really want to do) is eat dinner and go to sleep. If that’s all I had to do things would be fantastic. I love my job and am excited to go to the hospital every morning. Despite the fact that I’ve currently worked 20 days in a row and have another 10 days to go before I get a full calendar day off, I’m still happy with my decision to put myself through all of this.
Remembering priorities
That said, one thing I would like to work on is being a better husband. My wife is incredibly supportive, but it’s hard to find more than an hour a day to be together. Though I am technically home about 80 hours per week, I spend half of that sleeping and recharging for the next shift. For now, this makes us really appreciate the time we do get to spend instead of taking each other for granted. My hope is that investing all this work and time in residency will eventually pay off for both of us.
Learn how to maximize your time in residency by prepping for the USMLE live online with Kaplan—the world leader in test prep!
The post The Realities of Residency appeared first on Residency Secrets.