Whining...

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umza

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Ok so here is the deal. I'm an external resident working ped intern rotation.
July 1st, I show up for orientation, just a few hours. But they are short a resident, in fact the resident that is on call that night. They ask us on our first day, can you stay and do call tonight? All say no, but me, I said, well I have a child at home, I will have to make arrangements. They said, if you can work July 1 call then you will only have to do one more weekend this month and the fella that missed today will do your other weekend. So, I make arrangements, and I come in at 5 when my husband gets home. I work all night and write 15 notes in the morning, then go home after rounds.

Senior comes to me and says the other resident can't work your saturday, he's got NRP, like I care about that. So now he works my friday and I am stuck working three weekends in a row.

Worse yet, our period is only 25 days long. and we only work 1 in 4 call or less, by contract. Well I am scheduled for 7 calls in 25 days and the others on my service have only five calls.

Tell me, what did I do wrong by volunteering to help them out?
Am I very, very stupid? gullible?
I am disputing this shift, mostly on principle, that I don't like getting screwed over. Unfortunately, the people in the program that I am a guest at are pissed that I would have the gall, be so incredibly selfish, rude, or otherwise self centered that I would dare to tally other's call shifts, count my own call shifts or even dare to have a life that may require my attention away from their service.

Please help me get my head around this issue. It seems to me that I am not being unreasonable by standing up for myself. Although the school is small and word could "get around" that I am a complainer, I just don't like being taken advantage of....aren't there contracts for a reason... Patient safety, staff sanity, general humanity.

It seems that these people only went into peds to stick sharp objects into children:smuggrin:

Thanks for any help, comments, support you can offer.
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umza said:
They ask us on our first day, can you stay and do call tonight? All say no, but me...Well I am scheduled for 7 calls in 25 days and the others on my service have only five calls.
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I guess now you know why nobody else volunteered for the extra call! Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. ;)

Seriously, though, it was nice of you to help out. Hopefully, the peds folks will appreciate it. If not, they deserve it when nobody volunteers to help them the next time.

Off-service interns are usually the ones to get screwed over, so I'd just suck it up. You did volunteer for the extra call, after all.
 
Thanks Kent,
I know that the folks in FM are far nicer, hence that is my program.
Cheers.:)


No more favors. No more Mrs. Nice Guy.
 
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umza said:
Thanks Kent,
I know that the folks in FM are far nicer, hence that is my program.
Cheers.:)


No more favors. No more Mrs. Nice Guy.
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I find that outside hospitals aren't too kind to "rotators" I feel your pain.
 
I spent a year as the off-service intern during my transitional year. It sucks hardcore; the service will always protect its own.

How much do you care about your evaluation? If it doesn't matter too much, then go for it. It sounds like, contractually, you'll come out ahead. They will screw you on your eval. though; count on it.
 
It does suck sometimes to have a conscience. In my program, we often don't get too many volunteers to do things like cover a shift when someone is sick or help train someone, or whatever. The majority of residents conveniently don't show up for those meetings, don't respond to emails, or just ignore the entreaties. A few people do, and they are the ones who pick up the slack.

The thing is, though, the residents who do end up volunteering? These are the highest performing and most respected residents. It usually isn't a coincidence that this association exists. People who are willing to go the extra mile, be good team players, etc, often excel in residency. Not because of these actions, but because of the characteristics that lead to the actions.

You have to be careful though about always being the only one who volunteers - then you'll be the fallback anytime something bad happens.

Personally, it irritates me that so many residents do not volunteer at all, but generally are the ones who need the most help in covering shifts, finishing their workload, etc.

All that being said, I would dispute the extra shift. You agreed to help them out in a difficult situation, which you didn't have to do. It's someone else's turn now. There is a difference between being a team player and being **** on.
 
So, an update is in order....
1) the peds program director has pretty much written me off as "not wanting to learn or provide service" stating also that residents that express concerns about working call, although not reflected in their evaluation would have poor comments in letters written by their prog directors.

2) my union, although they have confirmed the new contract for July 1st,
will not support my claims at this time as they have offered the programs a months grace because the call schedules were made before the contract was signed.

3) my service chief has continued to be supportive and contradicted the prog directors comment of me being "uncaring and unprofessional" and my s.c. has also gone so far to call me the polar opposite of uncaring and unprofessional.

I feel that I am right, and I stand by with conviction. However, I will be standing by all through my entire collection of call shifts, "no negotiating and no bargaining" in the words of the ped prog director, who also went on at length to discuss her great difficulties she underwent 20 y ago when she did residency, bla bla bla.....
Oh well, sucks at the bottom....but the cream rises to the top...thanks yaah, really appreciate your perspective on the qualities of those that usually volunteer.
And, aprogdirector, I will be passing this on to my own prog director, I had not thought that that would be worthwhile.
 
umza said:
And, aprogdirector, I will be passing this on to my own prog director, I had not thought that that would be worthwhile.
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My first thought was basically the same, Where's your PD in all this?

My first day, I was told, "You have any problems, you come straight here. Nobody gets to take advantage of our interns except us."

Your situation blows, hope you weren't chasing anything in Peds. That being said, I hope you can really stick it to them, because what they did is just plain wrong.
 
umza said:
"no negotiating and no bargaining" in the words of the ped prog director, who also went on at length to discuss her great difficulties she underwent 20 y ago when she did residency, bla bla bla.....
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Right, back when they worked 1000 hour weeks without complaining, and never ate, slept, or peed.

Give me a flippin' break.

I'm personally glad the cycle of abuse is being broken and people are starting to stand up for themselves as residents, and in turn, for the patients.
 
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