Fighting Moral Decay in Residency

Residency – especially intern year – can be compared to the trenches of war. You are enlisted for a period of time, while you dutifully carry out the orders of superiors, and fight the enemy (disease) while you tend to the already wounded and dying. It removes you from your normal life and can send you into unknown territory, consuming the vast majority of waking hours (sometimes as high as 100-120 hours per week, which is the rarely discussed loophole within the rule of “[no more than] 80 hours per week averaged over a 4-week period”). It can be doubly isolating because the only people who really understand your experience are your compatriots – the co-interns and co-residents fighting in the trenches alongside you. Further, doctors in training, like our veterans, suffer from psychiatric illness and substance abuse issues, but this doesn’t garner much attention unless there is a string of suicides or high-profile articles on the subject. (Time Magazine also ran a story about it in September 2015.)

Advertisement