24 Hours on Red Team
What goes into training future physicians inside one of the country’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals?
Medical school is notoriously difficult. The bar for entry is high and the schedules and workloads are demanding, even grueling. In third year, medical students formally start their clinical training – called a clerkship – and, depending on the rotation, at least once a week they can expect to be in the hospital for shifts that last 24 hours. By the time handover is finished, it’s often closer to 26. It’s done in the name of shaping students into physicians who can manage heavy and frequently complex patient caseloads with expertise, grit and compassion.
Meet Zwetlana Rajesh and Radha Sharma. They are on the second block of their third-year clerkship at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. For the last eight weeks, they’ve worked closely together on the wards throughout their internal medicine rotation on Red Team, one of four colour-coded internal medicine teams.
It's at Sunnybrook that Radha and Zwetlana have seen the kinds of physicians they want to be – from the mentorship and guidance they’ve received, to the standard of advocacy and patient care they’ve witnessed.
During a 24-hour internal medicine shift, Zwetlana and Radha will move between the ward and different clinics before seeing patients overnight in the Emergency Department. We joined them for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to train to be a doctor in one of the largest and busiest teaching hospitals in the country.
