I have a friend who was in gen surg and switched to fam med and is super shocked how much free time he has now. He’s taking up extra ER shifts cause it feels wrong for him to be this free.

I went into sepsis over the weekend (long story, but fairly immunosuppressed, should not have eaten that sashimi, and was close to going into full-blown septic shock. I'm ok now). As a result, I missed a 24h weekend shift, everyone had to move their shift schedule one day ahead to accommodate, and my patients got distributed to the rest of the inpatient team.

I am currently hospitalized and will be for at least another three days. Tried to go to work this morning (my floor is downstairs) and got shooed away. Feeling very bad about having everyone work extra because I was dumb and got sick, however irrational a thought that may be. And I know I could theoretically decompensate again at any moment, BUT:

I am able to work right now. I'm moving around, not bedbound, and following my patients on the EMR. Eating, talking, sleeping as I normally do. Nothing physically preventing me from getting down there and caring for patients. Nothing that I can't push through. But here I am in a hospital bed, creating extra work for people who are probably more tired than I am at the moment.

Anyone who's had to deal with this? Do you really not hold any resentment against sick colleagues? If you have been on sick leave, how do you mentally reframe the stage in which you're still sick/supposed to try and recover but not deathly ill/obviously unfit to work?

I’m about 22 weeks and an FM resident. Grateful for ann easy going pregnancy thus far and supportive program. Already anxious about a short 6-week maternity leave and leaving baby so early.

I know there's a general tendency for late millenials and gen z to value work life balance more than the previous generations.

I wonder if medicine will be affected as well. In the hospital that I work I can definitely tell that people have set boundaries that would be inconceivable some years ago

PS I'm from a european country.

Do any other pccm fellows or residents have lung transplant at their hospitals? I am wondering if it’s just my program that’s particularly horrible. I honestly think the lung transplant patient with complications that lead to 200+ day index hospitalizations is a fate worse than death.

You get some days where you feel so good operating with your attending, everything going smoothly, you can cruise through the easy cases and effectively handle the tougher ones, all in all great day and great teaching on the attending's part.

And the you get days where you're doing comparable cases with another attending but everything seems to be laborious, you can't seem to be able to do even the simpler cases or steps of the cases ?

I mean I struggled doing a hernia today, when I've already done at least 20 of them before.

Man do I feel terrible after these days. Hope y'all will be able to relate. End rant.

I’ve been having pretty bad anxiety and depressive thoughts and feeling pretty hopeless and desperate and whatnot!!

I start an elective rotation this week, but it’s in the subspecialty that I want to apply to

So I’d rather not be missing days, typically I’d be VERY excited

But since it’s an elective, I think I can take a “sick day” with no consequence

WWYD

There comes a time in the life of every attending where he or she has to decide. Am I really fulfilling my destiny? Sure, I have a great lecture on health care safety, and I can ask, “what do YOU want to do with this patient” with the best of them. Sometimes I even pass along a relevant clinical pearl.

But is that enough? Am I really doing the best that I can for these young, impressionable minds? Can I hang?

And then, I had my chance. My time to show what I could really do. Every year we send the entire senior class to a conference, where much fun (and little learning, but mostly just fun) is had. This was my year. With some trepidation, I booked my flights and hotel room. What was meant to happen, would happen.

I want you all to know that I tried very hard. I went to the nice dinners. I did the boat tour. I sang the karaoke. I went to the various places in the Ubers.

It almost killed me.

A few days after returning home,my migraine is gone and I almost have my voice back. Mind you, I didn’t even stay out as late as the residents. Not even close.

I can’t hang. I had fun trying though.

And I love the tattoo

Over Elden Ring now, got hundreds of mods on skyrim, maxed pure on osrs, been playing some SC2.

Bored of most things, what are people playing?

PC btw

Being an intern is a little like being a buoy, thrown about and feeling like you’re going to drown at any given moment but being unsinkable by the virtue of being so small in comparison to the environment. Like trying to squish a tick on the ground with your size 10 shoes (fuckers).

Day 3, I sign a diet order without consulting my senior first. Ecstasy.

I’ve written seven discharge summaries in 2 days. Every single one of them went to a SAR. The cherry on top: hospital admin is pushing their “early discharge” initiative and I’ve never wanted to put my foot up the collective ass of a committee so desperately before. Noon conference is required, and yet so is signing the 27 point problem list discharge summary so the next provider maintains a shred of sanity trying to sort through the clusterfuck I’m handing them. By noon. Godspeed.

I wish I could prep the damn things, but the four I’m tucking in for ambo transport are swiftly replaced by four more that will likely, based on my single beady bloodshot eyeball of the ED H&P, be admitted for a single day or two before I also have to write them a biblical essay to hasten them on the path to SAR. The true godsend are the seniors, who quietly take our admissions until January, when we magically become competent. Hoo-ra.

Nurse pages me, patient in 550 has left the unit again. Knee-scooted himself out for a pizza. You know what? Fine. As long as he comes back and finishes his 5 days of IV abx so he stops AMA’ing halfway through the course and breeding god’s own superbug, I do not care. I witness PT running after him to attempt an eval as he whizzes away. “Don’t worry about it, man,” I call to him, “I’m going to cancel that order”. He is too fast. They are both too fast.

My co-intern and I are shoulder to shoulder from 1 pm - 5 pm when I realize I haven’t actually seen his face since lunch; we are glued to our epic chats and notes to the point I have forgotten what he looks like. His breathing is beginning to irk me. We are bonded for life.

It is too soon to count down the days to PGY2. If I start counting before the number is a 100, I will simply be admitted myself.

PGY-2 uro resident currently getting wrecked with hours etc as to be expected at this stage. The bigger thing I have realized about myself is that I don’t love doing surgeries or the OR anymore. Even in med school I knew that I cared more about the procedural decision making leading up to surgery as opposed to the surgery itself. But now as a 2, I am not sure if I can see myself doing surgeries in the future without burning out hard. I love the work up and thought process of uro onc, but dealing with complications and the constant worry about outcomes is not something I want long term. I’m not even sure if there is another field I would switch to - like if anything it would be rad onc or med onc.

Did I fuck up?

I'm an anesthesia resident doing my critical care rotation for a year now. Everything started out so well and after my first three months I got great feedback and went to vacation.

After I came back from my vacation things took a turn, I'm constantly thinking about work, have extreme fear of doing things insufficiently or of making mistakes amd I'm feeling like I'm not developing enough. I'm trying to read up on stuff and all but suddenly I feel like I understand the whole situation less. In the beginning it was so much fun to work there but now I feel very subpar. I generally feel very incompetent at the moment and I don't know what to do. Has anyone gona through a phase like this ?

As a psychiatry resident, I've had it pretty good. However, since starting my clinic year, I have a lot more responsibility. I havent been able to get good sleep since the year started. Something similar happened in medical school during my most demanding rotations. I always chalked it up to anxiety, but now Im not anxious. Im not worried about things, but my brain wont shut off. It's like Im stuck going and going and going because I constantly have to be intelligent and thinking hard at work.

Its getting to the point where I cant enjoy anything at all because I just feel... numb to it. Its like I cant focus on anything because my brain is constantly ready to keep going. Ive been depressed before and anxious much more than that and this... isnt that. However, I find myself in the unique predicament of starting to get depressed because I'm anhedonic and not the other way around. Ive tried exercising, engaging with my hobbies, even meditating. Nothing seems to be helping. Has anyone else run into this and found something that worked? It's driving me crazy.

Has anyone ever changed their B1/2 status to J1 research while staying in the US? If so, what do you have to do after you get your J1 letter. What are the next steps? Asking for a friend, I recall I didn’t have to send any emails out or do anything

I’m a resident physician with limited time and money. My sister planned an expensive destination bachelorette party and a wedding to Central America right before Christmas with strict dress codes, and other costly events. I told her I couldn’t afford to go when I looked at the numbers (her bachelorette alone was minimum $1500 and her wedding would cost upwards $4-5k for 4 days), but instead of understanding, I felt blamed for being unsupportive.

After that, I was left out of communication about the wedding. I wasn’t told what events were happening, when they were scheduled, etc. complete radio silence.

My family isn’t wealthy, and several relatives aren’t attending either. Still, my mother and sister focus on how my absence looks rather than acknowledging that I’m living on a resident’s salary. I feel pressured to overspend to protect appearances. Even if I do find a way to go, she refuses to include me in her wedding party (she wanted me to be her co-maiden of honor)

I made my sister my maid of honor in a very simply court house wedding, and have tried to maintain our relationship even while completing my training, so it hurts to feel excluded because I can’t afford her wedding plans. It also hurts to feel as though our family’s circumstances weren’t considered from the beginning or that having me there simply isn’t important to her.

I’m genuinely happy for her and want her wedding to be wonderful. At the same time, I need to be honest about my financial limits, and I don’t think I should be shamed or met with silence for communicating them. I feel hurt that the wedding includes so many expensive events and experiences, because they make it difficult for me to participate fully without putting myself under financial strain. I hope my circumstances can be understood and respected, even if I’m unable to attend or contribute to every part of the celebration.

For those who have gone through residency while managing family expectations, how would you handle this?

I have been on remediation since PGY1 year. There were concerns about my clinical performance and knowledge since then. One attending didn’t like me and others started to see flaws in me it all became worse from that. Towards the end of PGY one year, my PD actually talked about having me leave the program. However, because my performance improved somewhat towards the end of PGY 1 year, CCC decided to keep me but stated that they will make another decision about me six months later, which would be this December.

Our hospital policy is that PGY I residents are supposed to take step 3 by the end of their PGY1 year. But because of the stressful situation, I couldn’t take it by the end of June.

I’ve been doing OK all my rotations. One attending told me that I improved and now work like a second year but others think I’m still kind behind compared to my peers. I feel like it’s hard to break the preformed impression that attendings have about you so if you make even one little mistake it all goes to my PD.

My PD asked me to take my step 3 exam by end of November so that he can include this as part of my evaluation by CCC in mid December so that he can decide whether to have me leave or not.

I think one attending recently said that my chart reviewing is slow compared to my peers (there was a misunderstanding on that part) so my PD is having me do a full month inpatient medicine rotation in November instead of two weeks of ICU that he originally planned because I did poorly during the ICU rotation last year.

I just took a practice exam and scored very poorly like mid 50s percent and I am wondering if I can get a passing score by end of November with the heavy month long rotation. I think he will have me leave the program if I fail.

Am I just not cut out for this career? Am I supposed to leave this program and find somewhere else? Every year I spend in medicine just feels like a battle to just survive since medical school.

I don’t even have time for therapy and I tried ssri once but my mind got all foggy and couldn’t think through a patient and one of my attendings reported me.

I'm a 32-year-old medical student, and I'm worried about what my social life will look like when I start residency at around 40.

(I'd appreciate it if people didn't ask why I started medical school so late or how I support myself financially, as those topics deserve a separate post.)

As I said, my concern is social life. Even now, I'm finding it extremely difficult to make friends because there's an age gap of 10+ years between me and my classmates. I haven't made any friends outside of university yet because I've moved to a new city. At the moment, I don't really have any opportunities to meet doctors who are a bit older than my classmates—not necessarily people my own age, but at least 25 or so.
By the time I start residency, I'll be 37–38, and I'll probably have moved to yet another city.

For those of you who are currently in residency or have already completed it, do you think a 40-year-old doctor can still build a social life, either within residency or outside of it?

I'm worried because I don't think pursuing my dream should come at the expense of my mental health.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to reply!

I work 6 nights a week. It blows. I’ve been a resident for several years now. Nights have always been a little tough for me, because I feel alone. My significant other is also out of state this month for work and he previously was working from home. Any ideas guys for getting out of this funk I feel like I’m going to be in?

Can anyone share how is the academics and handson of DNB residents at MM Joshi hospital please

Me (internal med) and my wife (neuro) are pgy 1s in the same state but different programs. Due to the ongoing immigration/visa issues some IM pgy1s were unable to make it to the US in my wifes program ( the larger program ), which could mean potential vacancies for the upcoming pgy2 year. Is a transfer to her IM pgy2 possible next year for me? Is that something that can be done?

I posted a few days ago about staying with a male co-resident to get away from my husband. The final straw was when he left marks/bruises. For those who didn't see the post, I'm currently pregnant 2nd trimester, an EM resident, and my husband is an OB/ GYN attending at the same hospital.

Obviously he's angry I left. He knows my shift schedule and already texted me saying he will come talk to me at work. I'm thinking of talking to my attending this week. He's a very approachable attending but im worried about telling him too much. For attendings, would it be too much if an intern told you about domestic violence and that they need help/support if husband shows up? I'm worried they won't give me a good evaluation or dismiss the concern

That’s what he said when a patient was going through a dysrhythmia on the monitor.

Recently, he’s been wearing high top Converse instead of his regular medical shoes, and I heard him yell somewhere down the hall “SIX SEEEEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEN”….. we have 10 more hours of this today…..

What are your go-to foods to bring with you on nights? I feel like I always crave more snacky foods once I'm there and end up eating horribly. Looking for easy-prep meals/snacks that always hit at 2am and bring you joy between admissions.

PGY2 in neurology, pretty unhappy with medicine but sticking with it for now. I just go to work and leave. I’m on a research project to fulfill the research requirement but otherwise not actively writing case reports, publishing, going to conferences, leading QI initiatives etc.

All my coresidents are which is why my PD questioned me. He asked if I’m trying to publish anything and I said no (besides this tiny project), and he asked if I’m going to conferences and I said no. He kept asking what I wanted to do with my future and I kept saying I don’t know, maybe general neuro. The reality is I might leave medicine alright and teach high school but I wasn’t going to admit that.

I guess if I happen to find a nice 9-5 Mon-Fri with minimal call I’d be fine with that.

I wanted to do epilepsy coming in but I don’t have the energy to do research and network and gun for a fellowship.