family business

On Friday, I saw 12 patients. One patient for each half-hour appointment allocated to me in a day.

This is, roughly, about half the number of patients seen by a senior family medicine resident.
One third of the patients seen by a regular family doc.
Walk in clinic doc? 6 patients an hour.

I meet these people, hear their life stories, hear the secret dirty/horrifying/shocking parts of their life stories, then figure out what to do for them, document it all and kick them out the door.

As a random sample of Friday's patients I had a morning-after-pill, a post-female-circumcision PTSD patient, a psychotic young guy who asked me out for the weekend, a depressed patient who simply cried for half an hour, plus several adorable babies.

By Friday night, I was utterly spent.

I know it's wrong, but I couldn't muster the energy to interact with my friends. Going out, sitting down and asking them "How are you today?" seemed way too much like work.

For years, I thought my Dad was nuts; he prefers mindless physical tasks or chores to socializing. But now, having spent my Saturday night cleaning my kitchen, listening to music and not talking or listening to anyone, I get it. You run out of steam.

I'm not sure how I'll cope next year - 24 patients a day? For serious?