OT: Re: internships

At 12:00 -0500 4/22/11, Chuck wrote: ... Chuck, you are right on the money. Cameron, you know I like you, but the way interns are abused is pure simple insanity. Heck, pick almost any "operator error" disaster you care to name - Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, whatever - and odds are >> 80% that you will find someone either operating outside normal work hours or who had been recently doing so. On the last full mission I participated in, we made 4 critical errors during integration and test, any one of which could have damaged the spacecraft or terminated the mission - and *every one* of which was made outside normal working hours. Your own post that started this thread contained the phrase "Hope my overnight admission orders didn't kill anyone." Would you say that about any other part of your work? Would you want your loved ones admitted or treated by someone under those conditions? I admit there are conditions where doctors have to work long hours; I watched M*A*S*H just like everyone else. But *training* doctors to do that at the expense of patients' safety during normal times is dangerously bad policy, particularly considering the tiny percentage of doctors who will ever consent to work that way anytime during their professional lives. It's also educationally counterproductive, as anyone who has ever crammed overnight knows. Why and how the medical community, who has the best knowledge available of what physiological effects result from long-term sleep deprivation, ever allowed this practice, to say nothing of institutionalizing it, is beyond mystery and into mysterious evil as far as I'm concerned. I don't guess hospitals should be shut down but I think it would be a really good idea to take a few administrators and schedulers each month, ceremonially break legs or induce other disorders, and then admit them on the 36th hour of a new intern's first overnight shift. -- - Mark 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.