This is an entertaining look into the residency training experience in the United States, which is renowned for its brutality in certain specialities. As far as sleep-deprivation goes, it ranks right up there with some of the lowest quality of life professional jobs.
This is, basically, the quality-of-life information from the Internal Medicine in-service training examination, as reported in JAMA. The authors have linked it to in-training examination results for the, probably predictable, association of poor work/life balance and poor in-training scores.
Interesting tidbits I noticed:
– 15.3% of residents stated that life was as good as it could be.
– PGY-1 and PGY-2 residents had nearly equal poor quality-of-life and work/life balance – which improves significantly PGY-3.
– Over 40% of residents have >$100,000 in debts – and that was associated with poorer quality-of-life scores.
– Improvements in quality-of-life for PGY-3 was mirrored by a corresponding increase in depersonalization.
Not a healthy experience, by a longshot. Pity those whose residencies are longer than the bare minimum of 3 years.
“Quality of Life, Burnout, Educational Debt, and Medical Knowledge Among Internal Medicine Residents.”