Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World by Bryan E. Robinson;

Author:Bryan E. Robinson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press

10

Companies Behaving Badly, Encouraging Employees to Drink the Kool-Aid

There are way easier places to work,

but nobody ever changed the world

on forty hours a week.

—Elon Musk

Jax Feels Pressured to Underreport Work Hours

As a second-year medical resident in a major Northeastern hospital in the United States, I often work over twenty-four hours in a stretch and am fearful to drive home because I’m so tired and worried I might fall asleep at the wheel. Most of the time I call and talk to someone on the phone. The other option is either take a nap at the hospital, but after working over twenty-four hours, I don’t want to be there anymore. My program director said to take an Uber if I’m too tired to drive and that cost comes out of my pocket. My grandmother was here for the holidays when I was on call. She said, “I have so much more respect for doctors. I had no idea what they go through to get where they are.”

The governing body for residents, the American College of Graduate Medical Education, has guidelines that limit us from working no more than an average of eighty hours per week over four weeks. That rule was put into action after an overworked resident made medical errors that caused a patient’s death and resulted in a lawsuit. Residents sign a contract that states the guidelines, and we must report our weekly hours through an online form. Many residents, including me, frequently go over the eighty hours a week, and I often do not have the four required periods of twenty-four hours off in a month. In my first year of residency, I accurately reported my ten hours over the allowed eighty and immediately was caught in an email chain with several of my superiors asking me to explain myself. After that email chain, I realized that reporting the extra ten hours isn’t worth the additional work of having to explain myself when historically no changes have been made.

It’s a double-edged sword because I want to be honest with my reporting. But if I ask to go home “early,” I would be abandoning my patients and leaving their care incomplete, which is poor patient care. Plus, there’s a common saying in residency that medicine is a team sport. And I would be abandoning my team, leaving my clinical work for someone else which violates the whole concept of a team. Another catch-22 is if your residency program goes over the limited hours, the consequence could be that it will be shut down, and you would not graduate or become a board-certified physician. The dilemma is if you report your hours, then you in effect abandon your patients and team, get your program in trouble, and don’t graduate.

Eighty hours a week is a lot of hours, although in the last month, I worked ninety-two hours one week. But out of fear of backlash, I didn’t document the hours because it would require a meeting with my program director who is a physician.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.