Every third-year has heard it.
“…When I was in your position, I was taking 24-hour calls every other night. If my resident was there, I was there….”
We’re regaled about the glory days, without shelf exams, without phlebotomists, and—by god—without those work-hour restrictions. The days when medical students wouldn’t dare ask their residents for help, or residents their chiefs, or chiefs their attendings, and so on. I hear a bit of romance: the heroism of providing total patient care, exactly when the patient needed it, unfettered by handoffs or outside interference. I envy the skill required to practice medicine almost-literally in one’s sleep.
As the veteran doc continues his (yes, usually his) soliloquy, he may admit that it wasn’t the safest model for patients, or the most humane for trainees. He may today be a better doctor for it, but he’s a bit ambivalent about whether it should remain exactly the same today. Presumably he wasn’t alone, because since the good ol’ days, the third year of medical school has morphed into something barely recognizable.