Los Muchachos De La Playa
Monday, 7 July 2008
a record: 17 cases in 4 days, 12 hours of sleep. How safe is that, and the RRC (Residency Review Committee) is planning to decrease the working hours for residents to 60 hours a week. Of course I am no longer a resident, so no hours restriction for me. The hypocrisy of it all is laughable. The 4th of July long week-ends are notorious for the endless transfers from “bum-fucked” small hospitals as their surgeons are conveniently unavailable (more common if the patient is uninsured or under Medicare coverage). The result is a stream of disastrous, poorly managed cases looking for salvation in tertiary medical centers and all this in the middle of the night. My last transfer arrived last night from the VA at 1:00 am. Another poor vet with a cold, lifeless extremity. what the fuck, it’s the 5th one in 24 hours, what are you people doing, this is beyond acceptable probability. As one of my chief resident used to tell me, shut up you bitch, drop the skirt and grow a nut. So, like a man I embraced the challenged and saved the limb, after all what Vietnam did not take is worth saving. This is, by no means, a plea for pity, I deserve none. Shit, I heal with steel and love blood, I just wish that the rabidus medicus out there would chill and stop pretending.
No. 1 — July 17th, 2008 at 8:07 am
The culture of responsibility in Medicine is being eroded by the ACGME experiment (the “Outcomes Project”), some PhD’s in education who have decided to change the practice and the profession through their dictatorial control of residency programs (all at arms-length) - they are worse than NIH Study Section, who at least have to be succesful researchers in their own right before they judge others grants. I agree with a recent New England J Med perspective (358:1988) - I would rather have some courtesy than empathy. It is time to bring down the ACGME monopoly.