An medical intern's typical day

I spend a lot of time with friends and family dispelling lifestyle myths of medicine.  They're usually pretty shocked when I tell them about the hours we work, how sleep is minimal on call, and the severity of illness we deal with.

My typical day on a medical wards month starts like:

0445: Wake up.  I know I shouldn't really snooze, but I do sometimes.  I probably get up earlier than most because I like to take my time getting ready.

Shower and reluctantly put on my dress trousers, shirt and necktie (ugh, fomite).

Breakfast at this point or not.  I usually am too exhausted from the day before or hardly sleeping that I feel too sick to drink coffee or eat anything.  I entertain the thought of forced eating, but I never go through with it.  I end up feeling weak and dizzy in around 730am.

0545: I'm usually at the hospital at this time, reading up on patients overnight, getting in touch with the night resident and maybe getting a drink of coffee from my thermos.

I try to be as efficient as possible by starting patient notes, pending, then printing out what I have, and filling in information as I go see my patient in their room (how they did overnight, I/Os, pain, ambulation, vomiting/nausea/constitutional symptoms).  If I have enough time, I'll start writing patient notes before rounds.

0800 or 0900: Usually rounds.  Sometimes morning report is at or 9 and the team rounds after.

0900-12: Rounds.  In my opinion, rounding in medicine takes a lot longer than it should.  There are a lot of drawn out discussions that don't really affect patient care.  There's a lot of social work stuff that comes up at the last minute, and there's a lot of calls to be made to consult teams, etc.  Nothing glorious here.

12: Usually noon conference.  We keep getting paged and called but there's nothing we can do about it sometimes unless it's an emergency.

1200-18:00: Patient care, patient notes, calling consults, putting in orders, answering a lot of phone calls and pages.  It could be at any time during the day, but I'm constantly thinking about getting the cardiac arrest page.  I round on my patients on my own again or with the med student just to check up on things and be on the really early side of catching any possible complications/allergic reactions.

I also call family at this time and encourage them to visit and spend time with their hospitalized family member.  Family members are the best advocates for patients and they'll immediately call you if something happens when the nurse is busy taking care of 40 other people.

1800-end: If I'm not on call, I'm signing out my patients to the night person.  I'm glad I'm not cross-covering 80+ patients..

The days get pretty long, but call is always longer.

1800-2300: Study/read/answer texts from my bosses/dinner/squeeze in quality time with loved ones.  Everyday I wish I would have been able to come home to pick up my packages that are now in the closed office, or wish I could've gone to the now closed bank, or had more time to pick up something at the grocery store and cook.

Could be worse, though.

2300 or Later: Fall asleep and most likely have a hospital-related dream.