Call Blows

Hoover  22 Jan, 2006  Medical School

As a medical student, you’ll have to take call during your third and fourth year. Not only do you have the typical 10-14 hour work days (depending on rotation), but you also have to study for the “shelf” exam. On top of all that, those assholes responsible for the rotation make you take call. Shoot me now.

Basically, call is crap. I guess if you’re a resident, call is expected since you’re actually doing work and getting paid. Call for medical students, however, is a big waste of time. Nothing says “fuck you” like running scut at 2am after working all day. Ahh, the bliss.

The last time I was on call, I had to come into the hospital at 5:00 am to do my normal ward work and round with the team. As soon as this got done, that damn pager starting beeping. I was busy from around 11:00 am until about 2:00 am, and then I had to get up the next morning at 4:30 am to go see my patients. For those of you not in medical school yet - or haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing call - this scenario is not uncommon.

If you do get lucky enough to go back to the call room, your sleep will be light to nonexistent for most of you. After all, you can’t miss a page and you better sleep lightly so that you don’t continue to snooze. The ‘beep, beep, beep’ at some Godforsaken hour sends chills down my spine. I honestly do hate it. I have been known to make up stories such as “the battery died” or “I didn’t get the page.” I even tried to cut the damn thing off one time but they had that function disabled as it was an in-house pager.

It’s a blast to watch the residents though. Get in a large group of residents at a conference and watch as they all frantically search for their pager underneath their white coats when one goes off. It’s funny as hell. Those guys probably hate them as much as I do, but they’ve gotta answer pages. I don’t have to answer shit, I’m just a medical student. If you make it a habit of not answering pages though, take it from my experience that something will be said about it. I’ve even had comments written in my evaluation about me not showing up to every single page. I’m not doing a residency anyway so who the fuck cares? It sure isn’t me.

If you do get paged down for a call, get the hell out as soon as possible. The crafty resident will attempt to keep you hanging out with them so as to subvert any possibility of you not showing up later. Make up some excuse that gets you the out of there. Also, keep in mind that some of the time the residents you’re working with will be part of a night-float team. They’ve slept all day long and are fresh for the night and couldn’t give a shit how long you’ve been up.

Most of the crap you’ll be doing on any given call night is plain scut. The residents will use you to check labs, make copies, and to do any other leg work that they’re too lazy to complete. You might get to fill out an H&P, but I fucking hate those things just as much as any other scut. In fact, the H&P falls under the “scut” category as far as I’m concerned.

Medical students should only take call if they want to. This would narrow down the student on-call list to the gunners only, which is fine by me. Otherwise, call is a waste of time and intereferes with studying for the shelf exam. Gunners can “exceed expectations” and take my call while I sleep in.

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7 Comments so far »

  1. Anonymous said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:15 pm

    Are you single? Married? Dating anyone? You’re so funny, and I too am very bitter about medical school. I think we’d complain well together. Thanks for making me look forward to…well…nothing actually. Life is pretty much downhill from here I suppose, according to you.

  2. Anonymous said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:15 pm

    how much total sleep do you get on average per week?

  3. Anonymous said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:16 pm

    There’s something oddly attractive about a bitter, yet honest medical student. I have no idea what you look like, but I just know that you’ve got to be hot.

  4. Hoover said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:17 pm

    How much sleep you get varies with each rotation that you’re on. If you’re on a hardcore block such as medicine or surgery, you’ll work a lot and then have to study for the shelf exam once you get home. That being said, the amount of sleep you get really depends on how much you want to have a life outside of your rotation and studying.

    While on my surgery and medicine rotations, I would typically put in 14 hour days. I didn’t really study that much for the shelf exams, just enough to pass. Even though I wasn’t studying, just doing normal daily stuff like chilling with my friends typically only allowed me 5 hours or so per night of sleep. Of course, this gets fucked up each night you take call.

    While on other rotations such as Family Medicine or Psych, you’ll most likely work only 10 or so hours per day. Of course, this is totally dependent on your school.

  5. Hoover said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:17 pm

    Thank you ladies for the nice comments.

    I am happily married :D

    To the first anon poster, keep in mind that there are tons of non-clinical opportunities out there for an M.D. You’ll make more money and have a better life than your residency-bound classmates.

    They’ll hate you in the long run.

  6. Anonymous said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:17 pm

    I agree, H&P counts as scut for me. I’d rather see patients and then go do my own stuff than having to fill out some long ass note.

  7. panda bear said

    February 12 2007 @ 3:18 pm

    Why medical student call blows:

    You are not a necessary part of the health care team and nothing you do on call “counts.” In other words, they will never page just you for an admission or any other crucial decision, mostly because you are not in the chain of command, are not responsible for patient care, and everything you do or write will have to be approved and counter-signed by an MD, usually one of your residents.

    So you can take call and write the H & P for an admission which will really help your residents but if you don’t it’s no big deal either. I am notorious for not working my medical students and sending them home as soon as I can as they will get plenty of call once they start residency.

    The nurses are also not going to call a medical student for decisions because you can’t give them orders, only a doctor can and you ain’t it.

    With this being the case, Why kill yourself? I kept a low profile on medical student call, never volunteered for anything, and took my fellow medical student to the side on one rotation and reprimanded him when he wanted to make a list of our pagers to give to the residents. Why make it easy to have your sleep interrupted for no reason? Our school did not even issue us pagers and never stated a requirement that we get one. I only had one for my wife to get a hold of me.

    I despise call. I hated it from the first time I did it as a third year and look forward to the day, six months from now, when I will never have call again.

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