Having been in clinical medicine for a grand total of 14 weeks, I would say that Medicine is a very macho profession:
- Doctors don't take breaks....ever. We start ward round at 9am and it finishes around 1300. Four hours standing to attention with no 5 mins put aside for a quick drink. When the ward round finishes, clinic starts and so there is no room for lunch either. At 1700, teaching starts and that will carry on until the consultant gets bleeped away (Or until he finally realises that he has a wife and baby who expected him home three hours ago)
I don't know any other profession that expects it's colleagues to function like this. Every factory and ward I have ever worked on honours basic tea and meal breaks. As a nurse - the wards were manic but a part of the senior nurses role was to make sure that the nurses got their breaks. Medicine seems to be about seeing how long you can stay on your feet before falling over. If you succumb and fall over - that is a sign of weakness. If I was not in medicine, I would assume that they don't take breaks because they are too busy, but on my ward this is simply not true. They don't take breaks because that is not what doctors do.
- Medical students get brain washed into thinking that this is normal very, very quickly. I suppose most of them have never worked before and so perhaps presume that this is how every one works.
- Surgeons are even worse - as a student it's generally best to avoid the OT at all costs. On the day I was daft enough to wander in, I found myself holding a retractor for a six hour stretch. I was too scared to ask to go for a wee because the surgeon commented in the first half hour "I hope you're made of sturdier stuff than the anorexic waif we had in here yesterday. She passed out after a few hours and then said it was because we made her stand up for too long
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