ABSTRACT
Interns must learn how to do the work that is assigned them or they will fail to be valuable employees and, by failing, impede the delivery of patient care, subvert the Unit's place in the hospital, and make it impossible to accomplish whatever purposes they themselves may have in serving internships. This chapter describes how interns learn to do their work as employees and how they learn to maximize the return on their investment of time and effort in this work. A fact of the teaching hospital's organization is that people periodically vacate the positions they have had, and other people come in to fill the vacancies. Interns arrive at the hospital about the same time each year and leave, or at least vacate their positions as interns, at the end of the year. Almost simultaneously, new interns arrive, supposedly ready to do their jobs.
