Glad to know there will be continuity between the Dope and the Baylor MSTP! I don’t know many (any?) of the first years – I hope we have a chance to meet before I skedaddle. Come and introduce yourself sometime. Just ask someone to point out Ed, they’ll know who I am.
Wesley,
The schedule is generally “q4”, or call every fourth day. Call means you admit people to the hospital and generally take care of them and stabilize them while you are there. The schedule would go call Monday->Tuesday 1PM on, Wednesday normal work day, Thursday normal work day, call Friday->Saturday 1PM. You have 1 day in 7 off, so you would then be off on Sunday. The next week, you would take call on T->W and Sat->Sun and the way Hopkins works you would just continue working through the next week, call on W->Thurs and then be off the next Saturday. Call Sun->Mon, Thurs->Friday, and then you have what’s called a “golden weekend” where you have off Saturday and Sunday in a row. The sucky part is working the 14 days or so straight.
You have 10.5 months of “call months” your intern year – that means all the time you are not on vacation. 2 of these are actually medical ICU months where you are q3, which is horribly intense. Second year is a lot easier, with a lot of home call and no-call elective months. Third year is easier yet.
Qadgop
Tell me about it. You should hear my family friend’s stories (he’s a pulmonologist) about trying to estimate pulmonary hypertension severity by auscultating tricuspid regurg alone. No echos in my day! Certainly no newfangled Doppler!
Start volunteering early. Try to shadow a physician. Research always helps – try to get into summer undergraduate research programs, especially at medical schools you are interested in. It looks good and you may actually find that you like it (like me!) There are plenty of other things to do to set yourself apart from the crowd. The easy stuff (following doctors, candystriping or hospital volunteering, premed honor societies, etc.) are done by all the premeds. The harder stuff (2 years of research, a semester abroad with medical focus, volunteering in a clinic in Haiti, becoming an EMT for a few years after college) is the stuff they are really looking for.
Try to do well in your classes. One can push through orgo and hate it and still be an excellent doctor. Biochem and physiology, not so much. The premed regimen is a big weed out. Don’t get down on yourself if you find it is not for you. Doctors are just another cog in the big wheel of health care, perhaps a slightly more demanding one but just a cog nonetheless. Medicine isn’t for a lot of people, and there are plenty of other great things to do in the sciences and medical field that are not so demanding of a Full Life Commitment. And they often have fewer hoops to jump through to get in.
Consider an MCAT prep class. It would also behoove you to try and establish residency in the state that you want to go to medical school in. For instance, if you moved from Texas to California for undergrad, if you have the means, try to establish residency in California before applying to the UC schools for med school.
Lastly, I would consider majoring in something other than biology. The premed requirements are easy and if you major in biology, 75% of the stuff will be redone again in med school. If you major in German History or Spanish, not so much. College is really the last time to develop a breadth of experience and you should seize it with both hands.
Really, your pay is that bad for those hours? That sucks.
We’ve got the European Working Time Directive, which sets a 56 hour maximum working week, and intern pay is about £25k ($45K) before tax is taken out and (illegal) overtime is added in.
Well you know that’s the cost of the most advanced medical system in the world. I hope you can hear the sarcasm dripping through the internets.
In reality, we are doing near-slave labor for two reasons – 1) that’s the way it has always been done and 2) residents are about the only cheap labor the hospital has, and so they abuse the hell out of them.
With a medical system that leaves a substantial percent completely uninsured and most underinsured, with health care costs continuing to skyrocket, I don’t see more voluntary hour limitations or increases in residents pay any time in the near future.
