Medical doctors, what were the accommodations like at the hospital you did your intern at?

Question

I know that some hospitals provide beds for interns who have to work for hours in the day, so what are they like? Are they apartment quality rooms? Are the beds hospital beds or regular beds?

Answer 1

Heh.  When I was an intern, we had no call rooms on many of the floors.  One notable exception was the renal floor, where the call room was in the old tub room.  They crammed a cot in next to the tub where they used to bathe patients.  Gross!

Three years later, in my last year of residency, they did give us "real" call rooms with cots.  Not that any of us spent much time in them...  :-)

Answer 2

Apartment quality rooms?  Ha!  How about a bare room with 2, 3 or 4 beds in it, and a bathroom for all to share.

Maybe things have changed in the last few decades, and they certainly vary by institution, but when you're on call, you're lucky to have any horizontal time at all.  Trust me, as soon as you lie down, your pager will go off anyway.

Call = work, not sleep.  That's why interns look like death warmed over.

Answer 3

I was an unmarried intern in the early 1960s, making $100 a month plus room, laundry and board in an old city hospital. Actually, the food was quite good except for night supper (around midnight). I had a separate room with sink and comfortable bed, but shared a communal bathroom. Maid service. For this I was on call every other night except on surgery when I was on call two nights of every three. I was too busy to spend the little money I made; saved about $500 that year.  

Answer 4

I used to work closely with interns and saw the rooms they were given to stay if they needed a nap.  They were the bare minimum--not even a hospital bed--just a room with a bed and that is about all.  The hospitals have limited space--most of the time, the docs spent very little time in those rooms, because they were constantly being beeped and there was loads of work to do, so they really didn't need a room of luxury--only a place to lie down for a short nap.

Answer 5

If you're lucky enough to get a bed at all, plan on it being a hospital bed in a converted closet. It doesn't matter much, though, because you'll be sleep-deprived and tired enough that a nap on a rock would be welcome.

Answer 6

It varies--a lot.

I rotate regularly at three different institutions, and even between different services, the on-call rooms are different.  But generally, there's a room with a couple of beds in it.   Often there's a desk and a computer set up, so you can check on results without having to return to the nurse's station, and there's a bathroom.  One of the hospitals just converted a regular patient room to be the on-call room, so there are built-in cupboards/closets that were already there (and the beds in there are in fact hospital beds, though it's not the same on other services).  The other two have lockers in the room for your stuff, if you want to put things away.  The beds are made up with the regular hospital linens; often you have to make them up yourself, though at one hospital they always do it for you, which I think is awfully nice of them.

They're kind of like simple dorm rooms.  The chiefs sometimes have a nicer room that's been furnished a little more thoroughly; might have a TV in it as well and maybe some decorations.  

I have also done electives at hospitals that don't have them at all.  They did have nice lounges with couches I would see people crashing on for naps, though.  *g*