Warning: residency can make you depressed

Jugulator20
Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:52:32 +0000

IMO when med students graduate they know a lot, but they don’t know anything, especially in the specialty area they’ve chosen. The powers to be get this which is why new MDs are put in years of residency/fellowship supervised training post med school. Unlike the general population, residents for example:

may work 12+ days, 80+ DUTY hours a week,

every few weeks residents may interact with a continuing different rotation of more senior residents, fellows, attendings, etc, all of whom have their own pressures, idiosyncrasies, moods, personal issues, etc which could spill out onto subordinates;

as residents move up the residency totem pole the once somewhat deer in headlights interns now in turn take on increasing responsibilities/stresses/demands as to patient care, teaching (eg interns);

residents may leave duty hours when going home at end of day but their brains may still be spinning as to whether they did the right thing for patient X, prescribed the right dosage for patient Y, etc, which means their days/week may be much longer than just 12+ hour days/80+ hour weeks and so they have less recovery time from their job;

may have to deal with death and family grieving or feel in someway responsible for a poor outcome.

I just think that the stresses, pressures, demands, responsibilities that residents face are very much unlike the general population. So as the article uses what to me is broad wording (the prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms) I’m not surprised at article’s conclusion.