it all makes so much SENSE now!

[thatotherperv]

so we watched this video today on the development of anesthetics.

now I have always wondered WHY we persist with this system that keeps med students awake and making life or death decisions for days on end with no sleep. I mean, we now KNOW that sleep deprivation is pretty much the same, physiologically, as drug use, and you can lose your license for that. I only wonder about it more when I talk to my friends who are going into human medicine and they say things like, I nodded off 3 times today when I was assisting in surgery.

O_o

I'm never going to a teaching hospital again. lmao.

so here's the thing that links the two. and I am a little surprised that I didn't connect these dots earlier, because I knew all this.

Cocaine was a very common anesthetic/analgesic in the early days. we really didn't have any anesthetics before the 1840s, and after we moved past knocking people out with ether and chloroform to wanting to do local or regional anesthetic, coca was the drug of choice.

and you know, with the advent of injectibles, doctors discovered that if they mainlined coke, they could stay awake for days on end. it was FABULOUS.

the birth of the modern medical profession...when med schools were being developed and the institution as we know it was being created, originated at a time when all doctors were high on coke.

*FACEPALM*

Dear AMA. my doctors are not legally allowed to be on cocaine now, so plz to be changing your expectations.

Comments

[laisserais]

for reals, is that why? i always wondered! i also always thought that doctors must be magically superhuman, to be able to be on shift for so long, let alone be cutting in other people's organs in that state. ack! so, what you're telling me, then, is that they're not secretly superhuman? they're actually AS TIRED AS I WOULD BE? and they're cutting into me? dude.

[snogged.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. That definitely would explain a thing or two.

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

This practice has never made sense to me, and this explanation works. It still makes no sense. Does it ever come up in discussion with hospital administrators or school faculty making these crazy demands. You know, someone who might consider changing this practice?

[thatotherperv.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but I do know the medical profession is almost as married to tradition as the Aggies are, haha.

[sevvy-o.livejournal.com]

Um, med students don't make life or death decisions for days on end with no sleep. We don't make any decisions, we're just told what to do.

And resident work hours have been decreased dramatically from the days where they only got one afternoon off every other week and they fell asleep at tables. It's not as bad as it used to be...but at the same time, the older doctors feel as though the younger ones don't have adequate training because of it.

[thatotherperv.livejournal.com]

well yes, when I said medical student, I was speaking more broadly including interns and residents.

30 hour shifts are still ridiculous and not safe. I dug around a little and it seems like the media made a big fuss over it in 2003-04 when an intern maimed a girl in a car accident, but I couldn't find if anything changed after that. I don't think it did.

[sevvy-o.livejournal.com]

That's a little misleading because interns and residents aren't students, they've graduated med school and are doctors.

Yeah, they make a big fuss every few years, especially when an intern dies in a fiery car crash and happens to be the son of the hospital's chief of medicine or some other important person. Different states have different regulations regarding work hours though so it depends on where you are. As for whether or not it's ridiculous, I don't know where I stand, because I do think that it's necessary for the learning curve to be steep during residency training. There's a reason why it's called residency. lol

[yourlibrarian]

I so agree with this. It is dangerous and a foolish practice, especially since in most cases of normal practice doctors will never have to be in that state. For God's sake, we have limitations on hours of work for pilots, why not doctors?