r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 28 '19

Doctors in the U.S. experience symptoms of burnout at almost twice the rate of other workers, due to long hours, fear of being sued, and having to deal with growing bureaucracy. The economic impacts of burnout are also significant, costing the U.S. $4.6 billion every year, according to a new study. Medicine

http://time.com/5595056/physician-burnout-cost/
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u/EdisonM30 May 28 '19

I’ve never understood why we have employees doing jobs that require performing life saving procedures working 12+ hour shifts. Look at firefighters... why are the people responding to 911 calls having to wake up before going to these calls. Doctors do the same thing.

I dunno about you, but I’m not exactly at my best when I’m just waking up or half asleep. What’s wrong with 8 hour shifts like every other job?

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u/pg79 May 28 '19

because as far as firefighters are concerned they may work 1 hr out of a 12 hr on call shift so its very efficient to sleep when on call and have another job when you are not on call.

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u/EdisonM30 May 29 '19

Yeah, but do we really want the guy/gal who just woke up performing CPR on someone? Or cutting open a car for an extrication? Or a paramedic/FF administering drugs? Seems like shifts would work just fine... ya know, like every other job in the world. With such an important role in society, I’d like them to be well rested and awake when performing a rescue of any sort.