Thank you.
Take care.

Yeah, depression can be terrible and his suicide was tragic.

You make a good point; I feel that the character of our doctors’ lounge changed when it became at least 50% PAs and NPs. Yes, of course they deserve a break, but it creates a totally different atmosphere that is not as relaxing.
I’m retired now, but at the hospital they started serving free food in the Drs lounge at breakfast and lunch years ago, and maintained a Doctors’ dining room in the cafeteria, where one could purchase a meal and go eat in a quiet place – needless to say, the Drs dining room went the way of the dinosaur and I think it was a sad loss. It was a nice refuge in the middle of a busy day, but as mentioned in the column, productivity became the utmost priority of our corporate overseers. Glad to be gone.

@TPP – your actual typo made me smile! “Cavalry” are soldiers who fight from horseback and can swoop in and save the day. “Calvary” is the hill where Christ was crucified – May represent salvation but probably not what you meant. 🙂
And “Calgary” is a city in Canada FWIW.

Thanks for the comment 🙂

great Easter pun Calvary vs Cavalry

I’m in higher ed, not the medical profession, but experienced much the same thing. It seems that in many areas there is deliberately more work than time for a normal person to do the work. At the small colleges that I’ve worked there was just no way to ever hire enough people that were needed to cover the amount of work that existed, but not doing something was not an option.

For a long time I worked through lunch or just wolfed down something quick. I got to the point where I realized just what kind of negative toll it was taking on my health. The remuneration was just not worth it. I’m more of an early person so I’d get to work early and put in the extra then, but there was always work that was coming home with me too.

I figured that no matter what, I was working more at both ends of the day, so I was going to take a decent lunch break. When the weather was nice I’d take a walk outside. For awhile I’d exercise at the college gym. Sometimes I’d just spend time getting to know my colleagues.

It was worth it. I recognized quickly how much more productive I could be in the afternoon when I had that solid break in the middle of the day. Soon after that I’d get on my staff when they would work through breaks and lunch. I’d say that I was being selfish by making them take breaks because then they’d be more productive for me. Hopefully it was a win-win.

Thanks again for posting. It’s good to hear your thoughts.

It would be interesting to study that correlated length of lunch break with things like overall job satisfaction, efficiency, medical error rates, etc.Maybe if there was good data showing the benefits of protected lunch time it would be mandated.