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Comment by flardartbhhgg | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any idea how much break time surgeons take? Tons of them work 3day weeks because it’s more efficient. The rest of their time is either at home or “in clinic” doing busywork.

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-wit...

I suspect you’ve pulled “surgeon” from you-know-where on account of it being a high-status, high-value role. But don’t bring that baggage into the conversation.

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I think you were a little harsher than necessary, but this is a good point. Surgeons aren't doing surgery 40 hours a week. They'd be making tons of mistakes if they did that and they'd be getting burned out. The last surgery I had the doc only did ops on Tuesdays and Fridays.

In many ways it's a good analogy to writing code 40 hours a week. It takes high concentration and the quality of output drops heavily when you're tired or need a break or rest.

What I see here that they completely exhaust thenselves with working in several hospitals parallel, consiliums etc, then they go do surgeries in between

Also my radiologist neighbor works 3 day workweeks in 12 hour shifts I think. Or used to. I forget the details. So that example from GP doesn't make sense to me either.

3x12 doesn't seem too bad to me. You are zonked after but 4 days off is pretty sweet.

"Residents can work up to an average of 80 hours per week. The aforementioned general surgeons work an average of 60.78 hours. Meanwhile, orthopedic surgeons work an average of 54.17 hours per week, and plastic surgeons operate just under 50 hours per week."

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-many-hours-do-doctors-....

and yet you describe in-clinic work as "busywork". Pre/post op is super important, actually having to deal with human beings... this actually sounds a lot like software developers who could use a little more practice with the non-coding aspects of their jobs.

Busy work when compared to literally manually cutting and sewing someone’s organs to make sure they stay alive, yes.

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