Childhood friends and Doctor Yin are clearly in their sweet period, as the two often eat together, and the childhood friend frequently delivers late-night snacks to Doctor Yin.
Xie Wanying smiled and said, "Yes, the hospital mandates that doctors take turns working in the ergency departnt."
"Isn’t he from the inpatient ward? How do you doctors rotate shifts? He’s not an ergency departnt doctor, so why is he working in the ER?" Wu Lixuan, speaking from the perspective of an outsider, didn’t quite understand the doctor’s shift system.
"The ergency departnt has very few dedicated doctors because our country hasn’t established regional ergency centers. Each hospital builds its own ergency room instead—probably because this is more cost-effective," Xie Wanying said.
Every country’s healthcare infrastructure is different, tailored to its specific national circumstances. In China, with its large population, establishing regional ergency centers would likely not et the demand created by the sheer number of patients. Even with so many hospitals, the issue of overcrowding and difficulty accessing care persists, so the idea of building additional ergency centers to fulfill public healthcare needs is hardly feasible.
Hospitals set up their own ergency departnts, but specifically hiring ER doctors would require additional staffing costs. Given the nation’s current economic conditions, this isn’t financially viable. Hospitals operate under a low-cost model, and the burden is shifted back onto the doctors. Doctors from various hospital departnts are reassigned to the ER in rotation, saving labor costs. This has been the operating thod of the ergency system in the country for years, and it hasn’t proven unworkable, hence its continuity. Anyway, cases that ER doctors can’t handle are still referred to specialized departnt doctors for consultation.
Competition between hospital departnts over cases is already fierce. If ergency departnts started hiring dedicated ER doctors to compete over cases with other departnts, hospital leadership would need to weigh the necessity of such a strategy. For now, hospitals—including Guoxie—generally don’t consider this option.
Only when the economy develops, approaches that of developed countries, and the public’s living standards improve—accompanied by a greater willingness to allocate more funds towards healthcare—might this change be worth discussing.
As for the specific situation in Guoxie’s ergency departnt, doctors from various departnts assigned to ER duty are typically residents and attending physicians.
Yin Fengchun is an attending physician, and until he achieves associate senior status, he won’t escape being scheduled for ergency shifts.
"So you only stop taking night shifts after reaching associate senior status?" Wu Lixuan asked, hearing this information for the first ti. "Yingying, what about Senior Brother Huang?"
"Senior Brother Huang isn’t associate senior yet; he’s just an attending physician, so it’s the sa for him. This year, he’s even busier as a chief resident. Next year, when he returns to his departnt, he’ll continue taking night shifts in the inpatient ward and be assigned ergency duty rotations."
"So does that an there’s no difference between attending and resident physicians?"
Of course, there is. The primary group scheduled for ergency rotations should be first-year residents and above, who need accumulated clinical experience and training. However, Guoxie recruits mostly doctoral students, and those with doctorates quickly get promoted to attending physician status. This results in Guoxie’s ER having an even split between residents and attending physicians on its rotation roster.
"How often do you and him rotate into ergency shifts?" Wu Lixuan asked again.
How often depends on the total number of doctors assigned to the ergency shifts across the hospital. The specific departnt providing ergency rotation personnel—well, one can only say that the ergency departnt at Guoxie, like most comprehensive hospitals, only divides shifts into internal dicine and surgery groups. Regardless of the departnt size, anyone who ets the requirents must be fairly assigned to take ER duty rotations.
The exact scheduling is determined by the departnt assigned to ergency duty submitting a list of personnel in advance to the ergency departnt director, who then creates the detailed shift schedule.
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