November 30, 2015

by Pat Rees

I was teasing my young resident the other day that he had an entire "administrative day" off. What was he going to do with all his time. Yes, I know that he has a presentation to the medical staff in 2 days, has an hour long PowerPoint presentation that needs to be done by next week, is expected to read 2 chapters in the surgical text a week, and is to do all his "paper work" for patient charts, labs, pathology and such on this one day. Oh, and take call of all the patients that come through the ER that need surgical care.

At 10 PM, as he dropped me off at my house, having finished an emergency case with him and having gone over the work ups of the other two patients, he admitted, I smiled and asked him if he got a lot of reading done today (knowing full well that he had opened his computer once, and didn't get to read more than a page.) He laughed and told me he still had lots of time to read---rounds don't start until 6:30 in the morning! Oh the easy life of these residents. :)