I finished my call shift and am finally taking a much needed vacation, however short. Seeing as how Coronavirus is a thing, I will be staying home and making the most of my time. If you know me at all, you know that I don't even need to use the virus as an excuse. I would stay home anyways.
But I did want to take some time to reflect on my call shift and the state of my residency program. My hospital is currently in the middle of a "merger". For those who may not be in the know, trying to marry the ideals of an academic institution with a for-profit one...
Tenuous at best.
So what had happened was...
The dean of the actual university sold all of the residents out from under the medical campus. And she sold us to a competing hospital.
I hope you are starting to see the problem. You can't really have a teaching hospital without residents. And you can't keep running a hospital after you empower the competition to steal business. Doesn't seem like the smartest choice to me, but that's none of my business.
So what does this have to do with me?
I have noticed that the number of cases I read in a 12 hour shift has gone down. This past call shift, over 2 days, I only read 60 exams.
Don't get me wrong, your girl ain't asking for extra work. But it's just like my brother says: smooth seas don't make skilled sailors. So I've started bring my knit or crochet projects with me to the hospital so I can feel like I'm accomplishing something. Now if I get weird looks, or if people feel like I'm not doing enough work, that's a them problem (If anyone ever calls me on this, I will probably cry. I'm a huge pushover T_T).
What I do has to have purpose. I made a joke to my colleagues that I feel like I attract head bleeders. I had one each day and between them, they encompassed every type possible: subarachnoid, intraparenchymal, epidural, and subdural. It actually might make a good teaching case. Hold on a sec.
In all seriousness, I'm soft-hearted and knowing one of the bleeders is DNRCC (comfort care only, do nor resuscitate) upsets me. It's one of the reasons I'm not a "real" doctor, like in the emergency room or on the floors. Knitting and crocheting grounds me through the repetitive motion. It takes the edge off the anxiety and sadness that you can find in medicine. And it is a huge honor to be able to share in that but it wears on you sometimes too, you know?
I can honestly say that the new hospital has volume and that is important for my training. The teaching could use some work sometimes but they are new to this. A willingness to change is always appreciated. And the old institution has attendings who care and teach but were overwhelmed as they lost staff.
I guess you could say I'm living the best and the worst of both worlds. But things are changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. What side do I come down on? I believe in taking things stitch by stitch.