CHICAGO, IL – Residency programs nationwide – including but not limited to emergency medicine, family medicine, general surgery, internal medicine, neurosurgery, OB/GYN, and pediatrics – report that a combined 20,000 new interns are lost in stairwells, basements, and other nooks and crannies within hospitals and clinics across the United States and have subsequently called jeopardy to replace all of them.
“Those darn interns,” said University of Chicago internal medicine program director Iris Hampton, shaking her head in disappointment. “Every damn time. Every freaking year.” She pops four Advil with a glass of water before massaging her temples vigorously. “I know we’re going to find one stuck in a garbage chute, I just know it.”
Over 3 million overhead pages have been called trying to locate the thousands of lost new interns; none have been answered, though the sounds and echoes of those millions of pages in stairwells surely must have been deafening to them. Exactly eight tasks have been accomplished by these 20,000 new interns to date.
“Oh we’ll find them, we’ll certainly find them,” said University of Illinois intern search-and-rescue (SAR) team member Roscoe Stevens. “We train hard every year for this exact scenario.” Stevens has rescued over 4,000 July interns since 2007.
Back on July 2, 2014, over 15,000 new interns across numerous subspecialties were found AWOL; a staggering 96% of them were found in stairwells wandering aimlessly, cloaked only in fear, tears, and palpitations. The other 4% of interns were found in basements, broken elevators, random supply closets, and other strange locations.
“I had to cover one intern for two weeks in July last year,” said Rush University senior general surgery resident Vanessa Andrews. “It was a mess. He somehow managed to lock himself on the hospital roof. Who does that? I’ll tell you who: interns.” Andrews is one of the 20,000 “lucky” junior and senior residents pulled for jeopardy.
Analysts expect a similar percentage of this year’s class of new interns to be trapped in stairwells, stating that “this is simply what they do year in and year out.” To help expedite the recovery of the 20,000 new interns, residency program directors are considering flooding stairwells with water and simply flushing all the lost interns out. Everyone appears to be in favor of this plan.
“Our stairwells are constipated with interns,” said Northwestern University nurse Kelly Dade. “Sometimes you need to treat that constipation with an enema or a bowel prep. I think these interns need an enema or a bowel prep.”
