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Medicine must be one of the worst fields for getting a decent amount of rest. It starts (at the latest) with studying late at night in medical school. In residency, we seem to be in a perennial cycle of being on call or post call or trying to catch up on sleep for our next call.
When you become an attending physician, it gets even worse (something you didn’t believe could happen when you were a resident). Now you have a lot more to worry about because the buck stops with you. You get up early to round. You stay late to do dictations and may have to round again. You go home and try to have family time. You go to bed and worry whether you missed anything. As you fall asleep, your pager goes off. You have to return the call and then start over with trying to fall asleep. Then you get up early to round, again.
Most of us turn to caffeine to compensate. My poison of choice is a never-ending cup of tea. Others use coffee or diet cola. The more hardcore among us will use energy drinks or pop caffeine pills. I’m not sure how good these are for you in the long run, but I don’t know any doctors who make it through the day without them.
It’s ironic because, just like telling patients to eat healthy when we don’t, many of us lecture people on the importance of a decent night’s sleep. Sleep medicine as a field has grown rapidly in the last 20 years. And I suspect those doctors are sleep deprived, too.
My wife and I often joke that on weekend mornings, it’s important to make sure we wake up in time to take a nap.
Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare described sleep as that which "knits up the ravell’d sleave of care ... sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast." However, in modern medicine it’s one of the rarest commodities.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Medicine must be one of the worst fields for getting a decent amount of rest. It starts (at the latest) with studying late at night in medical school. In residency, we seem to be in a perennial cycle of being on call or post call or trying to catch up on sleep for our next call.
When you become an attending physician, it gets even worse (something you didn’t believe could happen when you were a resident). Now you have a lot more to worry about because the buck stops with you. You get up early to round. You stay late to do dictations and may have to round again. You go home and try to have family time. You go to bed and worry whether you missed anything. As you fall asleep, your pager goes off. You have to return the call and then start over with trying to fall asleep. Then you get up early to round, again.
Most of us turn to caffeine to compensate. My poison of choice is a never-ending cup of tea. Others use coffee or diet cola. The more hardcore among us will use energy drinks or pop caffeine pills. I’m not sure how good these are for you in the long run, but I don’t know any doctors who make it through the day without them.
It’s ironic because, just like telling patients to eat healthy when we don’t, many of us lecture people on the importance of a decent night’s sleep. Sleep medicine as a field has grown rapidly in the last 20 years. And I suspect those doctors are sleep deprived, too.
My wife and I often joke that on weekend mornings, it’s important to make sure we wake up in time to take a nap.
Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare described sleep as that which "knits up the ravell’d sleave of care ... sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast." However, in modern medicine it’s one of the rarest commodities.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Medicine must be one of the worst fields for getting a decent amount of rest. It starts (at the latest) with studying late at night in medical school. In residency, we seem to be in a perennial cycle of being on call or post call or trying to catch up on sleep for our next call.
When you become an attending physician, it gets even worse (something you didn’t believe could happen when you were a resident). Now you have a lot more to worry about because the buck stops with you. You get up early to round. You stay late to do dictations and may have to round again. You go home and try to have family time. You go to bed and worry whether you missed anything. As you fall asleep, your pager goes off. You have to return the call and then start over with trying to fall asleep. Then you get up early to round, again.
Most of us turn to caffeine to compensate. My poison of choice is a never-ending cup of tea. Others use coffee or diet cola. The more hardcore among us will use energy drinks or pop caffeine pills. I’m not sure how good these are for you in the long run, but I don’t know any doctors who make it through the day without them.
It’s ironic because, just like telling patients to eat healthy when we don’t, many of us lecture people on the importance of a decent night’s sleep. Sleep medicine as a field has grown rapidly in the last 20 years. And I suspect those doctors are sleep deprived, too.
My wife and I often joke that on weekend mornings, it’s important to make sure we wake up in time to take a nap.
Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare described sleep as that which "knits up the ravell’d sleave of care ... sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast." However, in modern medicine it’s one of the rarest commodities.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
