[mv]

they are completely different. Where I work in cali nurses are full time working 3 or 4 twelve hour shifts a week. Overtime optional and highly compensated.

medical residents will routinely do back to back 24 hour shifts with no sleep and even the ICU attendings will do a week of every other day 24 hour shifts.

The 16 hour rule only applies to interns. Once you reach second year the rule is 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks. This means that 100 hour weeks still do happen.

[shams93]

I was forced to do 100 hours a week for a company that had a sadistic culture of over work, you never get anything done, under those kind of hours unless you're doing stimulant drugs your brain just shuts down. I wonder how many doctors are also drug addicts just to make this kind of work intensity physically possible even?

[pdxandi]

I'm surrounded by doctors and I don't know any that abuse drugs, other than alcohol and maybe weed. I believe they are just so busy and so overworked that they are constantly moving around / doing paperwork. The demands of the job keep them going.

[Daishiman]

You must have never met psychiatrists then; never seen otherpeople take drug usage so lightly.

[finid]

You don't know any doctors that use drugs, but you do know of some that do weed.

I'm laughing...

Is weed a kind of tea, or is that an energy bar?

[Kluny]

He said abuse, not use.

[pdxandi]

In my experience, you are absolutely correct. I dated a nurse for a while and later married a doctor, and it was completely different. Physician training is absolutely, terrifyingly demanding.