Wes is spending this week and next in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at NMH. Emergency residents at Northwestern rotate out of the ED for anywhere from one to six months of the years, more when they're interns and less when they're fourth years. The NICU is a tough rotation because Wes never deals with preemie babies like this except in the NICU, and this is his first time in there. Despite this fact, he work every four nights as the main resident on call -- and if that doesn't scare you away from teaching hospitals, nothing will. Happily, the work of an ED attending includes no call. It's shift work.
When Wes's schedule first came out, it showed him on call three times. When he got to work yesterday morning, though, he found that there was a new version of the schedule, which he had not received, and he was on call Wednesday night. He'd been out late the night previous at journal club and up early that morning to prepare a lecture for conference. He had not slept nearly enough the two previous evenings.
Today, in the middle of the day, I got an email from him. It read: I want to die.
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