How to get good healthcare, Part V

The Bottom of the Hierarchy

Previously I made reference to med students, interns, residents and attendings. Let me explain something about hospital hierarchy. Medical students have all finished college. They may have masters degrees or PhD’s. Unless they’re some kind of Doogie Houser, they will be at least in their mid-twenties or much older. It can take years to get your resume in shape and numerous trials to get into medical school not to mention the divergent paths that lead folks into medicine. While plenty of these people are normal, some are intellectually and emotionally entitled requiring constant affarmations of their good work. This is probably why they do what they do in the first place.

Once graduated, the med-student gets an MD and goes on to become a resident. While they can now call themselves a “doctor,” they will be practicing under a temporary medical license as an “intern.” The internship, the first year of residency, can be the hardest year of a young doctor’s life. They frequently will work in excess of a hundred hours a week and may be severely sleep deprived. They will look tired, disheveled, their pockets may be full of papers, they probably have more than one pager on their scrub pants and they may be freshly fucked having just emerged from the broom closet with one of the nurses or better yet, nursing students. They are the nuts and bolts of a hospital doing the jobs that no one else has the energy to do at all hours.