I did call for years. I know what to expect. And your right, patients aren’t very well educated where I’m at and the system is too understaffed to change that.

I have health issues which make sleep challenging and being woken up in the middle of the night has lasting effects on me. Having done it in residency has little bearing to working on my practice. Our system has had the hospitalist fielding calls. That’s the way they chose to set it up. The hospitalist is there all night with little action and it makes sense to have someone already awake use their downtime to field calls.

The real questions is WHY? Why is primary care being expected to take after hours call? We have an urgent care open until midnight and an ER.

Being a healthy human means not becoming your job. Burnout is dangerously high as hospitals buy up every square inch of medicine. There is almost zero reason to have physicians doing call and messing up even more of their private life. The only pharmacy that would be open after hours is a hospital inpatient pharmacy. They would need to be seen to get any script.

I think it’s a poor choice to normalize abusing physicians, especially with an 80k doc shortage on our horizon.