Saturday, November 27, 2004
Total Body Fatigue
Okay this is a mini-meme rantoid. Be warned.
Once upon a time I used to hear about the hours doctors in Singapore worked from afar (in the UK), and feel a little sorry about them, and a little angry at the morons who wrote in reply, in various forums or even the newspaper that doctors "asked for it" when they became doctors, and that they knew the hours were bad and that they were being paid to provide a service, and they jolly well either do it and stop complaining, or else quit. It was always a little surreal to me, but I knew which side of the fence I was on - I suppose it was more a professional courtesy than anything else, but we worked long hours in the UK too, going on call once in every four or five days - if we were lucky.
As a medical house officer I often stayed back every day till 8 pm checking and rechecking my patient's blood results; I think I was probably pretty inefficient as well, and I tend to prefer to do things at a measured pace than blundering through them at triple quick time and missing things / fouling up. I suppose I just have a slow brain.
Anyway, now that I am here working 24 hour on-calls that effectively translate into 36 hour shifts since we have to go straight back to work the next day as well, with no post-call day-off, and getting 3 hours of sleep each time (the other MOs are always surprised when I reply that yes, I got sleep, I got three hours sleep and instead of sympathy, express surprise that I look so exhausted with : "wah. that's pretty good what.") and hearing about the previous MOs who have crashed their cars into lamp posts driving home from an on-call, all I can say to the unsympathetic public is that you are all f***ing idiots to expect your doctors to work these hours, and still be "safe". In the long run, my team is a good one and we have so many redundant MOs and senior staff that even if one or even three of them are exhausted, it doesn't make that much of a difference. But for smaller teams, I can only wonder what happens to all those mistakes rooted in fatigue that we don't hear about.
Having said that, the other super-doctors in the team don't seem to feel fatigue as much as I do. I suspect it's all an act to impress the consultants. 3 hours sleep in 36 hours is simply unphysiological.
After this initial month of "teaching" (feels more like a masochistic induction ritual) the MOs are entitled to their post-call day off. I'm betting the other two super-MOs will waive this right and work doubly hard. They are very nice people, so I don't reckon they're brown-nosing, but just being ultra-responsible... but I have a feeling I'm going to turn into the black sheep who goes home and dies in bed after every on-call. Or perhaps I'll just get used to the routine, since as my reg put it yesterday, "it's quite ok what."
Once upon a time I used to hear about the hours doctors in Singapore worked from afar (in the UK), and feel a little sorry about them, and a little angry at the morons who wrote in reply, in various forums or even the newspaper that doctors "asked for it" when they became doctors, and that they knew the hours were bad and that they were being paid to provide a service, and they jolly well either do it and stop complaining, or else quit. It was always a little surreal to me, but I knew which side of the fence I was on - I suppose it was more a professional courtesy than anything else, but we worked long hours in the UK too, going on call once in every four or five days - if we were lucky.
As a medical house officer I often stayed back every day till 8 pm checking and rechecking my patient's blood results; I think I was probably pretty inefficient as well, and I tend to prefer to do things at a measured pace than blundering through them at triple quick time and missing things / fouling up. I suppose I just have a slow brain.
Anyway, now that I am here working 24 hour on-calls that effectively translate into 36 hour shifts since we have to go straight back to work the next day as well, with no post-call day-off, and getting 3 hours of sleep each time (the other MOs are always surprised when I reply that yes, I got sleep, I got three hours sleep and instead of sympathy, express surprise that I look so exhausted with : "wah. that's pretty good what.") and hearing about the previous MOs who have crashed their cars into lamp posts driving home from an on-call, all I can say to the unsympathetic public is that you are all f***ing idiots to expect your doctors to work these hours, and still be "safe". In the long run, my team is a good one and we have so many redundant MOs and senior staff that even if one or even three of them are exhausted, it doesn't make that much of a difference. But for smaller teams, I can only wonder what happens to all those mistakes rooted in fatigue that we don't hear about.
Having said that, the other super-doctors in the team don't seem to feel fatigue as much as I do. I suspect it's all an act to impress the consultants. 3 hours sleep in 36 hours is simply unphysiological.
After this initial month of "teaching" (feels more like a masochistic induction ritual) the MOs are entitled to their post-call day off. I'm betting the other two super-MOs will waive this right and work doubly hard. They are very nice people, so I don't reckon they're brown-nosing, but just being ultra-responsible... but I have a feeling I'm going to turn into the black sheep who goes home and dies in bed after every on-call. Or perhaps I'll just get used to the routine, since as my reg put it yesterday, "it's quite ok what."
