Working The Christmas Shift, 2 Young Doctors Learn What It Means To Be Healers

This piece by Dr. John Henning Schumann that first ran in 2013. He reminisced then about a difficult assignment during his medical residency that helped him understand what it means to be a good doctor.

December is supposed to be the time of year filled with family gatherings and holiday good cheer. For medical residents, quite the opposite is true.

There are no school breaks during residency. Being a medical resident is a real job, and a stressful one at that. Residents work long shifts, as long as 24 hours straight and sometimes even 28 hours when needed for patient handoffs.