BOSTON, MA – Dr. Benjamin Kent is a general surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He recently sat down with The Science Post and recalled the greatest day he has ever had as a doctor.
BOSTON, MA – Dr. Benjamin Kent is a general surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He recently sat down with The Science Post and recalled the greatest day he has ever had as a doctor.
In 2004 I was in my second year of residency at Harvard, focusing on general surgery. We worked crazy hours and basically had no life outside of the hospital. If you managed to get one hour of sleep during your 12 to 36 hour shift you were very lucky.
I remember one Wednesday morning I showed up at 6am for my 6-midnight 18 hour shift. I got changed and headed to the doctors lounge to see what was going on that day. I sat down on the couch and I guess I drifted off to sleep. It’s not really a big deal because you inevitably get woken up by your pager every 5-10 minutes anyways. But that day I slept for 3 straight hours. I woke up around 9am not really knowing what happened. I assumed everything was eerily quiet since I hadn’t been paged all morning.
I pretty much walked around the hospital for the rest of the day, randomly popping my head into patients rooms to see if anyone needed help. I headed back to lounge several times to watch some tv and pound out some naps.
Needless to say I managed to sleep for at least 8 hours of my 18 hour shift. I did miss one of my surgeries though, a kidney transplant I was supposed to scrub in on. I had always dreamed of doing a 12 hour organ harvest and transplant surgery; but getting 8 hours of sleep during an 18 hour shift as a second year resident at one of the busiest hospitals in the country…that’s an entirely different dream.
– Dr. Benjamin Kent, MD, FACS, AAPS
