July 1st

It amazes me that medicine is a field where every year on a prescribed day, the entire workforce of academic hospitals across the nation turns over. As I've mentioned in the past, for reasons I don't fully appreciate, July 1st is the day when new housestaff begin. Newly graduated medical students become interns; weary interns become residents; graduating residents become attendings or fellows. The entire hierarchy moves up a level on the same day. What other industry would dare do that? How could this tradition be sustained for decades? We all laugh timidly when we joke "July 1st is the most dangerous day to go to a hospital" but how true is this statement? Are we really doing those we serve a disservice by standardizing the day when everyone steps into new shoes and takes new roles?

This transition is not to be underestimated. Housestaff - interns, residents, fellows - essentially run the hospital. We make the gears turn. So on July 1st, a whole new cohort of faces must learn those hard skills that the outgoing interns spent a whole year learning. Even ignoring the aspect of medical knowledge, I remember trying to figure out how to get from ward to ward, send pages, put in orders, discharge patients. Of course, we all support each other, and the new residents remember vividly when (just yesterday) they were interns. So it all works out. Sort of.

I am sure there are benefits to this system, that somehow it's the way things must work with the academic year of graduating medical students, the importance starting a whole cohort together, the coordination between different hospitals that swap residents. July 1st may be here to stay, so I wish you best of health this month.