23. That's how many days straight I am working. No days off, no 24-hour consecutive periods where I'm not at hospital. Instead, I've switched from days to nights to days again and have been at the hospital every day for the last 23 days, working at least 13 hours during each of those shifts. I have no freaking idea how there are zero duty hour violations.*
I am, unsurprisingly, grumpy.
It wouldn't be so bad if I was actually doing something during this time. You know, the usual intern things like working up floor issues, doing discharges, closing when I'm in the OR. But unfortunately, I'm at a program that gives more responsibility to its medical students than interns. It's incredibly frustrating, especially since I already have an intern year under my belt so I don't need the "practice" of being efficient at floor tasks and other basics of doctoring.
Last week, I was in a 12-hour OR case. I can count on one hand how many sutures I threw at the end of the case before the attending took the needle driver from my hand because it was getting late and he wanted to speed things up. "Let me close up so we can get out of here at a reasonable hour," were his exact words. I wanted to punch him in the face right then and there.**
Maybe I have unreasonable expectations about my role on the team. At my first intern year, they handed you the pager and said, "Good luck! Call me if you need anything," as they signed out a 50 patient list and peaced out. Here, you have to text the senior every time you place an order, including melatonin. It's absolutely ridiculous and incredibly frustrating, especially since I've already done this once.
But at least at the end of this stretch, I'll have some vacation and quality time at the beach. So there's something to look forward to even if I have steam coming out of my ears right now.
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* Somehow this doesn't violate duty hours, which blows my mind.
** He had sent me out for a break 7 hours into the case, and I was so hangry at that point that instead of grabbing a quick food and bathroom break and being back in 15 minutes (like I had initially intended/a good intern would do), I grabbed food from across the street, plopped down on the grass outside the hospital, and soaked up some vitamin D. I had zero regrets or shame when I strolled back into the OR 45 minutes later. In retrospect, I feel even less shame now that I know that this case contributed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to my learning and my attending didn't even notice I was missing since by that point he was working under a microscope and I was watching unscrubbed on a monitor.
