Waiting for an afternoon round with my consultant, so thought I'd update this a bit -- tried to do this last night but made the HUGE mistake of watching "Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows" on cable, and sorely regretted it. Not many movies suck, but this is one of them.

Got word from a penpal of mine from England who just started a traineeship in surgery, that they've implemented a shift system. This means there're 3 shifts each day, even in the wards. Obviously this is done to reduce doctors' working hours, which have apparently been implicated in a number of lawsuits over there -- he tells me the lawyers dig up medical records and find out exactly for how long the doctors involved have been staying awake, so as to build a case for possible negligence. This follows the recent trend in the U.S., which has also cut doc's hours to 80 hours a week, and no more than 24-hour shifts each time. I submitted a piece on this to the SMA newsletter a couple of months ago, which will probably be printed in the september issue, so more details then.