My Longest Workday

You may or may not know that medical residents work long hours. As a resident you are routinely "on call" at the hospital, meaning you stay at the hospital all night, taking care of any overnight admissions, addressing patient issues, or fielding questions from nursing staff about patient care, putting out fires big and small. These call nights for me are about every 4-5 nights right now.

You also may or may not know that there has recently been enacted new legislation amongst residency programs set to limit the amount of hours a medical resident works in a week.

The new limit is a maximum of 80 hours per week. There must also be at least one 24 hour period in which the resident is not at the hospital or on call per week. One must also not be on duty for more than 30 continuous hours.

These regulations are averaged out over a month's work for the most part. For example you may work 90 hours one week and 70 another, which averages out to 80 hours.

Last week, I had my longest day of work to date. I arrived at the hospital early on Thursday morning--4:45 am--to see my 7 patients in time to see them and have enough time to travel to downtown to another hospital for Resident Conference at 7 am. Conference ended at noon, and I made it back to the first hospital, where I was on call that night. So I was at the hospital all night long, and got maybe 3 hrs of sleep. Got up and started seeing my patients at about 6 am. Our team rounded on all of our patients at 9am, and we finished around noon. Lunch was provided for us by a pharm sales rep, which I had to agree to attend, which extended my day to 1:00.

Add it up...32 hours on the job that day(s).

Long day...not unusual...better than it used to be just 4 years ago for medical residents. Praise the Lord!