Residency = Crack!

So I found out some shocking information from a program that I heard on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" about Physician sleep deprivation in residency. Ever wonder just why you guys are working 80-hour weeks with no sleep? Just where did that fun "tradition" come from? I transcribed part of the program...

Spoken by Dr. Charles Seizer, director of the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School.

...the Tradition dates back to 1890, and was started by a pioneer in American medicine: professor William Halstet, from Johns Hopkins, who established the first program in residency training in surgery. He really set the standard for the nation by establishing these marathon 30-hour shifts. It was only revealed this past year in an article in the New England Journal (of Medicine) just how he was able to stay awake for so long.

It turns out he was a cocaine addict.

He had just been discharged from the Butler hospital in Rhode Island where he had been an inpatient for about a year and a half trying to get rid of his cocaine addiction. They were using morphine to treat him so he ended up with a morphine and a cocaine addiction as he took over his role starting up the program.

So we're left with the same traditional schedule in which interns and residents are expected to do 24 or 30-hour shifts and are expected to perform at their best...

So there you have it! According to Dr. Seizer on NPR and his citation of the New England Journal of Medicine, all that intense residency training owes its roots to cocaine addiction! Your wife nagging at you for working such long hours in residency? "Oh honey, don't worry. I'm trying to emulate a crack-head lifestyle, that's all!" Sure, that'll work.

And so, I'm gearing up. After I finish medical school, I get to live like a bona fide crack-head, and I bet after 30 hours and no sleep, you'd probably write prescriptions like a crack-head, too. You might as well bond with that frequent-flyer in the ED and tell him to just stay up for 30 hours straight in the hospital! He'll never snort the white stuff again, and you'll have one less guy to watch over in the ED. He'll probably even go for medical school himself so one day, he too can get his fix in the hospital, just like all the medical residents partaking in the wonderful cocaine-catalyzed "tradition."

Bottom line: A tradition as crazy as medical residency could only be explained by something like a guy on crack. The funny thing? It's true. I guess it's probably not all it's cracked up to be, eh?