{"id":8155,"date":"2016-08-19T08:20:44","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T12:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=8155"},"modified":"2016-08-24T14:43:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T18:43:04","slug":"vacations-pros-cons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/vacations-pros-cons\/2016\/08\/19\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Vacation Scramble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vanc<\/a>If you search “Are vacations good for you?,” you’ll find\u00a0overwhelming support for time off<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s as if journalists and the travel industry were in cahoots, together trying to urge us to take\u00a0vacations, the longer or more frequent the better.<\/p>\n

Hey, I get it. Time to reconnect with family and friends, to recharge those batteries, to get a fresh perspective on both work and life, to explore new challenges … yadda yadda yadda. The list of benefits is so long that it seems cliched to write them, so I’m going to stop there.<\/p>\n

But you know what? That pre-vacation scramble to make sure things are settled just right<\/em> before you go — that’s no fun at all.<\/p>\n

And if you’re a typical doctor\/nurse\/PA, you probably are\u00a0plenty\u00a0detail oriented. ID doctors in particular\u00a0will know that “detail oriented” barely begins to describe their obsessive attention to the minutiae of their everyday practice and life —\u00a0and that includes establishing\u00a0whether the culture was positive for M. abscessus <\/em>or\u00a0M. abscessus<\/em> subspecies\u00a0bolletii, <\/em>making sure the out-of-office message conveys just the right information about when\/where\/how long that time away will be,\u00a0and\u00a0whether they’ve left clear directions to the person they’ve hired to feed the cat.<\/p>\n

After all, how can you go on vacation if you’ve still not figured out how to get Mrs. Smith’s vancomycin level between 15 and 20? Or informed Mr. Jones that the\u00a0last viral load that came back at 23 copies\/mL (instead of “not detected,” as usual) is no cause for alarm?<\/p>\n

The <\/span>Big Secret<\/span>, of course, it that nothing is ever completely settled,\u00a0<\/span>whether we go on vacation or not. So we may as well take\u00a0<\/span>some time off, which is what I’m about to do (hence this post).<\/span><\/p>\n

But it also gives me a chance to share this funny (at least I think it’s funny) text, sent to me by an ID colleague who runs the Antibiotic Stewardship Program<\/a> at another hospital. For non-ID readers\u00a0out there, these programs (generally run by ID doctors) aim to guide clinicians to the most rational use of antibiotics, in particular\u00a0to avoid inappropriate use of broad-spectrum therapy,\u00a0reducing the risk of bacterial resistance (a very bad global problem).<\/p>\n

He was scurrying around trying\u00a0to finish up some work before leaving on vacation, and received this series of messages from a hospitalist who was trying to consult him one last time<\/em> before he left:<\/p>\n

\"text<\/a><\/p>\n

Safe to say\u00a0he responded to her at 9:11!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you search “Are vacations good for you?,” you’ll find\u00a0overwhelming support for time off. It’s as if journalists and the travel industry were in cahoots, together trying to urge us to take\u00a0vacations, the longer or more frequent the better. Hey, I get it. Time to reconnect with family and friends, to recharge those batteries, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}