RSS Feeds
The Effect of Work Hour Regulations on Personal Development during Residency
- From Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa, and University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
In my first week of residency, I spoke with some of the graduating residents about their plans for the future. I asked them a question they had probably heard many times: “What are you going to do next?” Most of them were taking time off to travel or spend time with their families. Some were planning to do part-time, locum tenens work to pay off loans. Only a few of the class of 12 residents had conventional full-time positions lined up. I was surprised that this dynamic and accomplished group of new family physicians did not seem very interested in practicing medicine, at least not full-time.
Now, as I approach the halfway point of my residency, I cannot imagine why anyone coming directly out of residency would want to practice full-time, except out of financial necessity. Residency training, even in the most humane of programs, is such an all-absorbing experience that I, too, crave time to rest and reflect.
There are some good reasons for the long hours of residency. The task of transforming new medical school graduates into competent, independent physicians is a Herculean undertaking (1). When I feel overwhelmed by the work of residency, I comfort myself with the reminder that all I have to do is go through the training process, not design it. Residents …
