My dear intern....

Dr Sandeep Jauhar, who debuted as an author with Intern: A Doctor's Initiation in 2007, writes about learnings from his internship

quest column

Dr Sandeep Jauhar cardiologist at Northwell Health, New York City, and author most recently of My Father's Brain

I did my medical internship 25 years ago, but I still remember it the way soldiers remember war. It was a brutal year in New York City, probably the most trying of my professional life. Working 80 or more hours per week and staying up every fourth night or so on call, I spent the year in a state of perpetual exhaustion, as a near-ascetic with regard to family, friends, food, and other pleasures.

After our son Mohan was born, my wife Sonia, also a doctor, referred to the newborn period as a kind of internship, and it definitely wasn’t easy, staying up night after night. But taking care of a newborn was very different from internship. In internship, when you were awakened in the middle of the night you had to be prepared to deal with almost anything—often alone and in the worst possible state, too. It didn’t matter if you felt like you were going to drop. You still had to be at the top of your game.

Our residency director told us during orientation that assistance was always available. “You should feel free to call on us anytime, day or night,” he said, amid nervous chatter. “The only mistake you can make is not asking for help.”

However, as the long year got started, I soon discovered that senior residents and attending physicians rarely wanted to be woken up in the middle of the night. You could call them if you needed help, of course, but few of us ever did. Not calling backup, I quickly learned, was considered a sign of strength, and for an intern there was nothing more flattering than to be considered “strong”.