The Junners experience

We have a term for menial labor here in the medical world. We call it scut. 

Scut work can be any manner of busywork: things like tracking down records, calling the lab, calling the pharmacy, scheduling a follow up at hospital discharge, and a million other little tasks that require no particular medical knowledge but are integral to the day to day care of patients. Scut work is often the domain of medical students but nobody is immune. Interns to attendings all partake in the scutty tasks of the day. And nurses. Oh the amount of scut nurses do. 

A somewhat uncomfortable truth I’ve really come to appreciate in the last 6+ years is that medicine is scut work. Many people seem unaware of this when they decide to pursue a health care career. 

Sure there’s exciting moments and gratifying patient interactions. But the TV portrayal of medicine is gratuitously inaccurate. It’s fewer emergent chest tubes and more calling maintenance to figure out where the hell your patient’s blood is when the tube system breaks. It’s less open cardiac massage and more wondering why the EMR refuses to E-prescribe tylenol. Soft admits and crappy consults are bread and butter scut everywhere. 

But if there’s a second truth that I’ve learned it’s that scut matters. 

french: :)

english: oh boy

french: :)

english: oh no

french: :)

english: oh geez

english: :)

french: don’t

german: :)

english: oh dear

spanish: :)

english: no don’t

spanish: :)

english: oh lordy

polish: :)

english: i changed my mind

polish: :)

english: please don’t