[wott]

> Speaking of drunkenness, being caught drunk on the job is a firing offense for a doctor, and I believe you can also lose your medical license, right? Sleep deprivation has been shown to affect judgment, alertness, memory, and reaction time in a similar manner as alcohol. If it's fine for a doctor to be sleep deprived, why not let them be drunk while working too?

Unfortunately, it's not just a rhetorical argument, but it is a true problem with hospital doctors: alcoholism, drunk at work, and of course abuse of all drugs that are easily available for them. And everyone covers it up, as long as there is not a major accident.

There are of course the same reasons as in the general population, but there are extra ones: the pressure; the stupid work organisation with stupidly long shifts; the fact that most of the medicine studies are also insanely organised and insanely competitive (in my country, this is where you find the shittiest mood and mentality of all studies, except perhaps a few business studies), thus the habit is taken early to use alcohol and drugs to "perform" or to "put up with the workload", except that it is 'fine' when you are young, but when you get older and keep the same habit, you don't recover and the effects accumulate.