Morning guys. I'm Siobhan, a first year internal medicine resident.
I've been getting a whole bunch of questions about how many hours I work.
So I figured I would give you a sense of what a typical
work week is like when you're on internal medicine as an inpatient service.
Today happens to be Saturday, because that's the beginning of my week. I'm on call today, so we'll start out with that.
Alright. So it's 8:50 now, so we've got here right on time.
And now I'm just about to start my Saturday call shift. One eternity later.
Just got home from my call shift, probably left the hospital around 10 a.m.
Which is pretty standard when you're on call for the weekend, because people don't come in until 9am.
So now I'm gonna enjoy my post call day, so no hours of work and then I go back in on Monday.
Good morning, it's Monday.
Ehm, I'm feeling really tired. It was so hard to pry my eyes open this morning.
I feel like I was just on call and I'm on call again today.
So we're on call an average of once every fourth night, but it doesn't actually have to be once every fourth night. So right now
my call shifts just happen to be stacked together, so Saturday and then Monday.
Anyway, so I've got to get to the hospital by 8:00 a.m. and then I do another
26 hours today.
First chilly day of the season, so already have to bust out the fall jacket.
I fear the winter jackets are coming way too soon, but anyway... Power on, get to work.
I made it just inside, 7:55.
Right, so now it's 11:30. Just finished seeing my patients.
I actually just handed over the pager to my senior, because I'm running out the door and I'm going for a research meeting across the street.
So I'm gonna do that for an hour and then I'll come back and
see what needs to be done, which patient still need to be seen. So it's about one o'clock,
I just got back from that research meeting.
I always feel so motivated when I get to talk about research and exciting projects that could actually change clinical practice in the future.
Tomorrow.
It's now 9:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
It was a pretty busy call shift until about 4:30 a.m.
Then I had a chance to sleep from 4:30 until 7:30, so that felt really good.
And I think I owe it all to an awesome medical student, who is fielding pages and dealing with things.
Thank you to her.
At this point I'm gonna be heading home
and
go to sleep, take advantage of this day off. It's 4 p.m. now,
I just woke up from my post call nap, more like post call sleep.
And I don't know why, I just lay down on the carpet floor and now I can't get up. I'm so exhausted.
So I'm trying to work up some motivation to actually get up, maybe go for a walk.
Otherwise I think I'm gonna spend all day just lounging around or on the floor.
Morning guys. It is Wednesday and it's 7:30 in the morning. So work starts at 8:00,
but I only really have to work for half a day today, because we have something called academic half day. And every Wednesday afternoon
we get together as a class and we have lectures. So this is the part where you're a doctor, but you're still a student.
You're still learning and so they have to give us protected time in our program to get better.
So hopefully the day will go smoothly. Oh man, now I'm running late.
I put on my wrong shoes, I put on my Toms that I was wearing last night and I didn't put on my work shoes.
So I'm heading back up in the elevator to change them.
Man, so annoying.
So no more Toms,
getting into my
work shoes. Off we go to try this again.
It's now 12:20, so I'm done with my morning.
It's always very rushed when you try see all the patients and it's all crammed into just a morning.
But now I'm heading upstairs in the same hospital, which is ideal to our academic half day for teaching around
evidence-based medicine. And then I'm not actually sure what else we're doing, I'll find out.
So it's 5:45 now, I just left the hospital. We had academic half day, talking about acute pancreatitis.
So really really good and useful topic and then I had my research meeting, which
basically we just want to make sure that we're on top of a research project, because it's mandatory for our program. So check, did that and
now I'm heading back home. I'm gonna try to keep some motivation and actually go for a run. And
then I'm going to practice some violin, because I've got a
concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra coming up this weekend, so I've got to get some practicing done.
So it's 8 p.m. now, I'm just practicing a little bit, so see if you guys recognize this one.
Do you recognize it?
So that's from an opera by Rossini called William Tell.
So it's just coming up on midnight now and I know that I'm staying up too late and I'm gonna regret it tomorrow,
but I had to practice a whole bunch.
I also had to prep
an article and we do something called a bottom line. And it's basically when you did give a quick summary of a scientific article
and you're basically trying to decide: Is this good evidence? And would we actually
apply these concepts to our patient? Anyway, I'm gonna head to bed now, but I'll talk to you guys in the morning.
Thursday morning now, walking to work. It's probably about
7:45 and I'm heading to grand rounds, which starts at 8:00 a.m. And when I was a med student,
actually pre medicine,
I had no idea what grand rounds was and I was so excited when I was invited to go to it once,
thinking that we were gonna be going around and seeing all the patients, turned out
it was just a big lecture. It was still exciting to go then,
but now I don't think I get the same rush of excitement going to grand rounds, but nonetheless
we'll see what the topic is, I'm sure it'll be good.
It's 1:45 now, I just finished doing my bottom line presenting that paper and it went well.
I got some good feedback and I also learned a bit more about what we call non-inferiority trials.
And now I'm heading up to see a couple of patients
before we have to meet again as a team. So I just left the hospital, it's about
5:20 p.m. And it was a bit of an exciting day, because there was no senior medical resident
so people were joking that I'd been promoted. And
while the staff really really helps out,
it did sort of feel like I was responsible for more things and had to get a lot more done during the day and
I got a sense of what it's gonna be like next year when I'm a senior medical resident.
Anyway, I just stopped by my favorite Lebanese restaurant and picked up a fattoush salad
with chicken on it, which is my favorite
lazy
meal to have, so I can pick up something I don't have to cook,
but I can still get something healthy and tasty. So I'm gonna go home now
and my plan is mostly to be practicing violin tonight.
But I also want to get into the gym, even just for a little bit, even just for 20 minutes.
And I'm supposed to also be
editing a video for you guys, so I can release it on Saturday like I like to. But to be honest I think
this week has just been so crazy. It just might have to come out a day later, so I hope you guys understand.
I guess that'll have been last week, but hope you guys did understand.
Just finished my workout. You can tell I'm sweaty and red, but I'm feeling really great.
It was really really hard to motivate myself to actually leave the apartment once I'd already gotten back from work.
So I would just say that if you're in that situation,
don't talk yourself out of it! Get to the gym, do something active, you're going to feel great after.
Today is Friday morning. Woohoo, end of the week!
So I actually have a fantastic team and they're letting me leave early today,
so that I can go to my orchestra rehearsal, which is at 2:00 p.m.
So I'm gonna work hard this morning, so I don't leave them with too much work to pick up in the afternoon.
And then, ehm... I'm really looking forward to playing violin in an orchestra again.
It's the end of the week, so it's time to tally up the total.
Drum roll, please!
Total number of hours:
75
So yeah, that's definitely a lot of hours in the week.
And it's probably a bit less than usual, because I took Friday afternoon off, so maybe closer to 80 hours a week.
But honestly, a lot of people work really hard in this world doing lots of different jobs, some people working multiple jobs.
So I can't complain because of the privilege of doing something that I enjoy.
Not to say that I don't get tired and sometimes feel like
it's too many hours and I just really want a break and I just want to
go to a topical island. But overall, you get the opportunity to shape the kind of career and
practice that you want in the future. So you can choose hospital work, you can choose to do more hours,
you can choose to be a surgeon or you can choose to do outpatient medicine and control your hours a little bit more.
There's a whole lot that you can do, so don't let the idea of it... Oh, fly!
There's a whole lot you can do, so don't let it discourage you if you think: ''Wow, that's so many hours!''
Next week I'm starting a different rotation.
So I'm actually going to be in the outpatient settings, so you can compare and see the difference.
I actually don't really know what the hour difference is gonna be like and if it will be that big of a difference since we still do call
but I'll show you guys what it's like. Make sure to have a safe Halloween weekend and don't forget to get your flu shots.
So comment below if you guys have any questions
or want to let me know how the video is. And don't forget subscribe if you want to see more videos like this.
I will chat with you guys next week in the next video and talk to you later.