We've got a bleeder!

Love that line from Something About Mary.

Well, I'm here on another fine night in the hospital. In order to protect the name of the hospital and keep my job I will refer to it in code. I work at John Hawkins Hospital in Bodymore, Murderland.

Call nights in the hospital are quite variable here on the Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery Service (doctors of the head holes). Sometimes busy and sometimes not, but there's usually one thing or patient that will keep you up. Tonight we have someone coming in who has a postoperative complication. The thing is, the patient didn't get their operation here. As an academic institution we often get "dumped" on with patients whose own doctors are too busy or unavailable to take care of them. People know that there are residents at John Hawkins and other academic institutions who are available at God-awful hours of the night and morning who will do the right thing and take care of sick patients.

I will be bold and self-serving and say that Residents are the most underpaid and underappreciated healthcare workers. We make less per hour than the janitors, go to school and residency for literally decades, and come out with ever-decreasing salaries. Without Residents, we wouldn't have academic institutions, without academic institutions we wouldn't have medical and surgical advances, and without advances we'd still be bloodletting and using leeches and maggots. Oops, I guess we are still using leeches and maggots. You get the point though.

And whoever perpetuated the myth that doctors are rich? This person or these people should be shot. Do you think that in their 8th year out of college that lawyers and bankers are still making 35 to 40000 dollars a year? Didn't think so.

Next time you or your loved one is in an academic hospital that trains residents, just notice how much that Resident is there and thank him or her.