Their Coats Are White, but Their Hands Are Green | NYT | 6.30.04
July, popular belief has it, is a perilous time to get sick.
Come July 1 every year, thousands of newly minted medical school graduates flood teaching hospitals to begin residency programs. They have lots of enthusiasm, anxiety and book knowledge - and extremely little clinical experience. …
I can’t prove it, but I am willing to bet that the July phenomenon is mostly a myth, and the reason is simple. Whatever the new residents lack in medical experience is more than made up for by the vigilant supervision they receive from their attending physicians. Like many of my colleagues, I’ll be watching over my residents like a hawk this summer.
Probably one of our medical “urban myths”—just like more crazies— come to the ED with full moons.
I remember well, almost twenty years ago, first night as an intern in a county hospital with CCU call—the big events always etched in memory of that night:
2 Comments
Yeah, Galen and some others commented on the New York Times piece — I’ll be an intern a year from now and am looking foward… to the supervision… As a precaution, I’ll warn local readers not to code in July.
As for the full moon, I did a pubmed search a while back, and summarized the findings at
http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com/2004/02/full-moon-fever.html
Yeah, Galen and some others commented on the New York Times piece — I'll be an intern a year from now and am looking foward… to the supervision… As a precaution, I'll warn local readers not to code in July.
As for the full moon, I did a pubmed search a while back, and summarized the findings at
http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com/2004/02/full-mo...