How doctors eventually learned they were human too

Last week, I had a bad bout of the flu to the point where I had to skip rounds since I could not stay upright for very long. My wife, also a doctor, promptly got it from me, and she had to cancel some clinics. While we were recovering, we were still answering texts and calls and participating in family conferences for patients via Zoom.

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As Gen X doctors who graduated from medical school in 2001, it was an implied commandment that you couldn't be absent unless you had a life-threatening illness. High fever and chills? As long as you could walk, you would come in anyway. The patients always come first. This gung-ho attitude extended to our academics. I remember I had dengue while in medical school and was confined to the hospital. I didn't want to be absent from class and be required to take finals, so I put my uniform on over my IV line and went to the classroom. Fortunately or unfortunately, the teacher in that class was the same doctor taking care of me in the hospital. I was unceremoniously sent back to my room, and I wasn't able to sign attendance. On the way back to my hospital room, people in the elevator admiringly looked at my IV pole and my uniform and complimented me on how dedicated I was to the practice of medicine.

During our clerkship and internship, we pulled 24-hour duties every three days and worked 12 hours post-duty, easily clocking more than 100 hours of work per week. If you were absent, someone had to take over your duties and ended up with double the work. You also had to make up for that absence somehow, even if it meant working on Sundays or after your rotation was over.