Luke Ford

Rabbi Gil Student blogs: The Succot 5770/Fall 2009 issue of The Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society has been published:

• Correcting the Ba’al Koreh: Punctilious Performance vs. Public Embarrassment by R. Moshe Rosenberg – A fantastic discussion of the multiple views over whether you have to correct a mistaken Torah reader, concluding that we must follow the view of the Rema and correct grammatical mistakes that change the meaning. Exceptions include when the reader does not normally differentiate in that grammatical sense. Plenty of examples of mistakes that can be made. And then practical advice on how to avoid these problems. My only comments are that he doesn’t quote Tosafos (Avodah Zarah 22b) among the lenient authorities even though it seems to me that Tosafos is lenient; R. Tzvi Hirsch Grodzenski (Mikra’ei Kodesh ch.7 n. 35) seems to lean towards being lenient on this but leaves it "tzarikh iyun"; and, finally, R. Rosenberg seems to get way too much joy from this whole subject, there’s enthusiasm bouncing out of every page of this article.




• Shomer-Shabbat Residency by R. Dr. Raymond Sultan and Dr. Sammy Sultan – Oh boy. Basically an article arguing that medical students must forgo specialties that do not allow for Shomer Shabbos residencies. Quickly dismisses what I’ve been told by doctors (and I find hard to believe) that any residency can be made Shomer Shabbos if you know what you are doing.

Jonathan posts: I have also heard that any residency can be made shomer shabbos if you know what you are doing. That means: 1. Don’t rock the boat with the administration- keep it quiet and simply trade your shabbos shifts for their weekday shifts 2. You’ll have to sweeten the pot, as no one is going to take your Saturday shift and give you a Tuesday. You’re going to have to take 3 shifts for every two you give back. It means that to be shomer shabbos, you’ll end up working even harder than residents normally do.

CHARLIE HALL POSTS: I don’t know about "any" residency, but my wife went to a non-shomer Shabat family medicine residency and was able to arrange a schedule that did not involve Shabat or Yom Tov work.

An interesting question that I haven’t asked my rabbi: Suppose you have a person who is frum in every respect except he/she is doing a non-shomer Shabat residency. Can I eat from his/her kitchen?

"Does any physician follow the Aruch Hashulcahn in his/her billings for services?"

My wife gets paid a straight salary as an employed physician. I don’t think she even knows how much her employer bills Medicare and Medicaid for the services she performs. My understanding is that similar arrangements are not uncommon today.

"you’ll end up working even harder than residents normally do"

My wife told me that some of her fellow residents resented her because the Sunday shifts she worked in exchange for Saturday shifts were one hour shorter. Never mind that she NEVER had a Sunday or holiday off.

Finally, I have never understood why residents can’t work on Shabat. If I, with no medical training, see someone ill who needs to go to the hospital, I can drive them to the hospital myself if that is necessary. Kal v’chomer someone who actually might be able to help them! Medical residents have far more training that hatzalah volunteers. And medical residents actually do most of the work at most teaching hospitals — and if someone is not in a situation of at least safek sacanah when they arrive at the hospital, they will be within minutes after being admitted. (I’ve even argued that it is a chiyuv to sign papers to discharge a patient from the hospital on Shabat if the patient is able to be discharged.) Can anyone explain to me why the prohibitions on residents are so stringent? (I will add for the record that I’ve never heard any rabbi publicly agree with me regarding residents.)

MD1 posts: Charlie, very few residencies can be made shomer shabbos, unless it’s designed that way from the start. Exceptions are more likely to be found in the less stressful ones like ophthalmology, derm, psych, rehab, and probably family medicine.

As a med student at a high-powered med school, I tried your wife’s approach, and I became an object of ridicule, and my relationships with attendings and my peers took a nose-dive in several rotations.

I then did a shomer shabbos residency, that involved nearly every Sunday and holiday plus several volunteer call days. I had no problems at all, and was able to excel in my rotations without negative interactions.

During my "non-shomer" fellowship, my patients were all very ill, and there were no clinic days on weekends for me. The few admin things (e.g. rare patient discharges) that I could not get a resident to do, I did with a shinui. Patient notes (e.g for procedures) for sick pts are pikuach nefesh, but I used a shinuy (and a verbal declaration (mishum aivah))for all such mamash melacha.

I highly discourage non-Shomer-shabbos residencies, but in some specialties SSRs just don’t exist. In many specialties/programs, that means seeing many patients who are not in a sakana situation, and doing mamash melacha, with no real heter. It’s not much different than opening your shoe store on shabbos. I don’t believe that the heter (mishum aivah) for doctors applies to patients that can easily wait a few days or weeks. And I doubt it applies to a doctor putting himself voluntarily into such a situation.