Several generations of general surgeons have an indelible memory of the beeper going off just as they are drifting off to sleep, notifying them of a patient in the emergency department with acute appendicitis. These surgeons would spend the next 4 hours, sometimes the entire night, examining, imaging, and operating on that patient. Needless to say, the next day's clinic or operating room sessions were punctuated by yawns as the weary surgeons struggled to maintain attention to their practices.