I don't see the advantage to long shifts in a field like medicine (research, sure, but not patient care) Rather like keeping a pilot flying for 36 hours. they did it in the Battle of Britain because they had no choice and I saw guy do it in Laos because they were crazy and so wanged on speed they could have done it without the planes, but the body just doesn't do well on long stretches the way the mind does.
I always figured the long shifts for doctors were some kind of hazing ritual.
>If you visit an ED at the weekend, the resident physician who deals with you may have been on shift without a break for 36 hours. And now she's going to stick an instrument in you or prescribe medications.
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>FWIW, that's progress: in my day we'd start on Saturday morning and remain on duty until Monday afternoon- a 56-hour shift. We did that every second weekend while still working Monday-to-Friday with one or two of those weekdays being 32-hour shifts as well.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
