People think its bad that we sleep during our tour of duty (which can last for 24-a years, mind you - some specialties require perpetual duty such that the resident doctor will literally live at the hospital). we are not robots. It's physiologically impossible to work 27 hours and still be on your best game. Medical errors happen, you know.
People seem to think that we call all the shots regarding the hospital policies and the like.
We really don't. You may beg us to do a procedure before paying for the procedure, but in majority of cases its really not up to us unless we pay for it ourselves from our own paychecks. If we really think its necessary, yes, we push through hospital policies to give you what you need. However, if we give in to everyone, hospitals will shut down. There is not enough government support for this to be possible. trust us, we want free health care (government subsidized) for all. We want to heal everyone. In a perfect world, that could happen. please think about this before blaming us.
People seem to think resident doctors get a percentage of what they pay for (read: resident doctors are licensed doctors in training. they get monthly salaries. Fellows may or may not get salaries, depending on whether the hospital has plantilla for them). We don't. At Least not directly. We get salaries, but that is it. We don't have private practice to support us financially, so we depend on our salaries to eat and have å roof above our heads.
People seem to think that while we are not attending to their needs, we are somewhere else doing anything less important that attending to their needs. Chances are we are attending to someone more severe. Just thank God we don't have to attend to you first. That means we think you'll live a little while longer than another patient.
People seem to think that because we chose this profession, that we do not deserve weekends or even Holidays. Yes we do. We suffer burn out. We suffer depression. How dare the public remove the right to self indulgence from us?
People seem to think, and sadly people who are also doctors, depressingly people who have the power to make changes in the health system of the country (doh secretary, for example) seem to think that because we chose to be doctors, we owe it to our countrymen to serve the indigent population barring our own needs to support our family and safety.
Believe me, there are many who want to. I wanted to, before i entered residency. However, slots are limited and female doctors are discouraged because of instances of rape in some assigned posts.
Our government should build more public medical schools to train government doctors and they should build proper hospitals or clinics and address the issue of safety before belittling our sense of charity.
most consultant doctors I look up to have served in public hospitals because even hospitals in the Metro remain poorly manned, poorly supervised. As a fellow doctor in Manila, I see 40-80 patients per day. That means that on a busy day, I see 4 patients 3-4 patients per hour on a 24 duty. But because Im human and i gotta pee, gotta eat, gotta nap. lets subtract 2 hours from the day for me to take care of my self too.. that leaves 22 hours for 80 patients. And any tour of duty will have code (aka resuscitation after cardiac arrests, or intubations) which will require 15-60 minutes each, leaving us with about 18 Hours for those..hmm.. 76 patients.
New patients require most time because we have to talk to them, elicit their histories, do physical examination, doing labs, going back to the patient to explain the findings etc. requiring about 15-1hr minutes each. Each night there are 20-30 new patients out of the total 80. So lets take the average 25 patients x 30 minutes each = 12.5 hours. Leaving 5.5 hours to the remaining 51 patients needing our medical attention = 9-10 patients per minute. This includes doing their paper works : chart completion, medical abstract, prescriptions, all patients rush us into doing.
Sometimes, when I do rounds at night to a patient who complains that he couldn't sleep, my inside thoughts are "buti nga ikaw nakahiga ngayon e".
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