menometrorrhagia

The stroke service at the large county hospital I work in is incredibly busy. The past 8 months it's been even busier than usual as one of the other large hospitals in the metroplex has stopped accepting acute stroke patients (because the neurologists who work there feel they don't get paid enough to come in in the middle of the night to evaluate these patients -- and they're right). The stroke rotation is far and away the busiest rotation a neurology resident in my program can do.
I just did it two consecutive months of stroke. By the end I was hating life, for many reasons, but here are a few:
- the sheer volume of work is daunting
- most of the work is not "doctor" work, per se, but more appropriately social worker work
- greater than 60% of my time is spent searching for and filling out useless paper forms
- the people I work with can't find it within themselves to be on time for the 7a.m. rounds that happen every single day, so every single day starts with me wasting my time waiting on these assholes to show up, watching precious minutes of the busiest time of my day evaporating while I get progressively more pissed off
- fuckers
- the volume of work dictates a certain amount of time be allocated toward fulfilling that work, yet this amount of time is greater than the mandated work hour restrictions on residents; thus I'm forced to either look like (and in fact be) a shitty doctor or lie about the number of hours worked -- I'm pretty sure this is not what the ACGME had in mind
- fuckers

But this month I was scheduled for neuropathology. I'm not sure non-M.D.'s will appreciate what this means, but essentially it means that instead of getting to the hospital at 5:30, I'd get there at 8:30. Instead of being on call every 4 nights, I'd never be on call. Instead of getting pissed that people can't show up on time I'd be reading in the library. I'd see my kids. I'd be in a good mood. I wouldn't want to strangle everyone.

Instead, last Monday I got a frantic page from my chief resident that the person taking over stroke from me was not coming in and I had to cover for them. And, oh, by the way, you're on call tonight. And oh. by the way, you also have your clinic this afternoon. And oh, by the way, we didn't consider asking either of the residents coming off two or three months of not being on call to cover.

So I stepped up and worked an extra week of stroke and on Friday I was told the derelict resident was set to return this week. I signed out to her on Sunday and she took over on Monday. For 36 hours I enjoyed my life on neuropathology. This afternoon in my clinic I get a page from my program director that I am required to take over the stroke service again because that resident had gone derelict again. FUCKERS!

I don't know all the details of what's going on with my colleague, and I don't care. Whatever is going on she has handled in a most unprofessional way. On two occasions she has simply NOT SHOWN UP. Doctors are not allowed to no-call no-show. EVER. It goes without saying. What the fuck is wrong with this woman? You deal with your non-emergent shit until you can make arrangements without fucking up everybody's shit, you selfish cunt. Fuck.