Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe

hours, “scut work,” and little power on the job. American medical interns and residents, some of whom are members of the Service Employees International Union’s Committee of Interns and Residents, have fought to reduce their workweek to eighty hours and to trim back twenty-eight-hour shifts to a mere sixteen. Yet the interns, in particular, still face arguments that what they are doing isn’t really work but part of their education. They also hear the familiar argument that their demands for shorter hours or rest breaks shortchange patients, that they should put their needs on the back burner to care for those in their charge—despite studies that have repeatedly shown the deleterious effects of long hours on a physician’s quality of work. Although medical interns and residents are paid, their salaries are a fraction of what a full-fledged doctor makes—they’re closer in pay to the hospital’s cleaners than to the attending physicians.