Blah blah blah
The further you go in residency the slower you find yourself walking to so called "emergencies".....It might be the under-called consult with "you can see it in the morning, no big deal" (only to find dead gut an hour later) or the over-called vaginal bleed... Patients will die.
JAD
There's no melodrama or surgery savior complex. I just completely disagree with you. If there's any drama, it comes from your vivid imagery of the stupid and valiant surgery resident "wrapped like a patriot in the American flag."
I definitely don't think all medicine residents are stupid, and surgery is the light. I think there are dumb@sses in every specialty, including surgery, and there are excellent residents in all specialties, including medicine or, god forbid, emergency medicine. I do think, however, that once someone has shown their cards as a true dumb@ss, trying to manage a critical patient over the phone with them is very difficult and can be risky.
Anyway, I'm not as far as you in my training, but I have been doing this for a while, too. If you really want to get residents to accept your laid-back approach to emergencies, you need to start earlier. There's actually an "intern advice thread" recently started on this same page....but you better get over there quick...the first piece of advice is "always go see the patient."