WhatsApp notifications in the middle of the night were the final straw. I switched those off – and every other alert – and it helped my wellbeing, sleep and parenting
As a Dr’s kid nothing you have said sounds unusual for your job. My dad didnt like getting calls asking for free care but he was more than happy to run to the neighbors house when my buddy, aged 5, called at 3am and said “The baby is blue!”. That baby is 45 years old now and not blue.
Yeah I think your inability to turn off notifications is artificial. There’s no reason that these emergency calls can’t go to a landline in a staffed hospital instead of directly to one specific doctor.
If the organization requires this, that’s different from it actually being impossible to do otherwise.
If your hospitals are businesses, you as their employee are subsidising them. They could spend the money on an additional, qualified doctor, but they won’t.
So you aren’t required to be on call, you want to be on call. You want it because your patients are not well served by general practitioners, and providing 3rd parties the whole context of care they need is difficult.
it’s neither a US- nor a profession-specific issue. it’s an issue of any high-stakes, relatively niche occupation.
Not really any one, most sectors have office hours, schedules, on-call rotation etc.
It’s unusual to saddle a single person with 24/7 required availability. Do you not have a single colleague you can rotate after hours calls with?
Headline reads: “i turned off ALL notifications forever”.
My take: there exist people who can’t do that.
Your take: US bad.
My take: not a US-specific issue.
Your take: please describe your call schedule in detail because your claim is unusual.
Thank you, but no thank you.
As a Dr’s kid nothing you have said sounds unusual for your job. My dad didnt like getting calls asking for free care but he was more than happy to run to the neighbors house when my buddy, aged 5, called at 3am and said “The baby is blue!”. That baby is 45 years old now and not blue.
Tbh suddenly changing skin color is nothing normal for humans
And it’s great my buddy’s first thought was that my dad lived a block away and is a doctor.
Yeah I think your inability to turn off notifications is artificial. There’s no reason that these emergency calls can’t go to a landline in a staffed hospital instead of directly to one specific doctor.
If the organization requires this, that’s different from it actually being impossible to do otherwise.
If your hospitals are businesses, you as their employee are subsidising them. They could spend the money on an additional, qualified doctor, but they won’t.
So many assumptions…
No your context is very relevant
So you aren’t required to be on call, you want to be on call. You want it because your patients are not well served by general practitioners, and providing 3rd parties the whole context of care they need is difficult.
That’s fine.