Commmute?

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boaz

boaz

shanah alef
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I'm starting IM PGY1 at a relatively suburban hospital and am conflicted between living in the hospital area (no commute, but a bit isolated for me) versus nearby city (40 min commute, but much better for "life" otherwise). Anyone have advice or experiences to share?
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boaz said:
I'm starting IM PGY1 at a relatively suburban hospital and am conflicted between living in the hospital area (no commute, but a bit isolated for me) versus nearby city (40 min commute, but much better for "life" otherwise). Anyone have advice or experiences to share?
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In Intern year almost all of my rotations were true 12 hour shifts with 30 minutes of sign out at the end. That's if you get your work done on time and never have an admission run over. That leaves 210 conscious minutes outside of the hospital, six days a week, to exercise, hygiene, prep all your meals, read on your patients, and relax. You really want to take 80 minutes of that to drive?

If you live farther away you will also:

1) Be one traffic jam away from being seriously late and labeled a problem resident

2) Likely fall asleep behind the wheel after night float

3) Spend 5K/year between the extra depreciation on your car and the extra gas for the commute.

4) Learn to hate your car, and all local radio stations, with a furious passion.

Live near the hospital. As close as humanly possible, walking distance if its available. Occasionally I have met senior residents who commuted and weren't completely miserable, but as an Intern this plan is f-ing crazy.
 
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I had a similar commute my 2nd and 3rd years, and I grew to hate that (though never even got close to falling asleep at the wheel after night float, c'mon now).

I can't imagine having done that every day during intern year.
 
Perrotfish said:
In Intern year almost all of my rotations were true 12 hour shifts with 30 minutes of sign out at the end. That's if you get your work done on time and never have an admission run over. That leaves 210 conscious minutes outside of the hospital, six days a week, to exercise, hygiene, prep all your meals, read on your patients, and relax. You really want to take 80 minutes of that to drive?

If you live farther away you will also:

1) Be one traffic jam away from being seriously late and labeled a problem resident

2) Likely fall asleep behind the wheel after night float

3) Spend 5K/year between the extra depreciation on your car and the extra gas for the commute.

4) Learn to hate your car, and all local radio stations, with a furious passion.

Live near the hospital. As close as humanly possible, walking distance if its available. Occasionally I have met senior residents who commuted and weren't completely miserable, but as an Intern this plan is f-ing crazy.
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:=|:-): to you sir. Job well done.
 
Perrotfish said:
Live near the hospital. As close as humanly possible, walking distance if its available. Occasionally I have met senior residents who commuted and weren't completely miserable, but as an Intern this plan is f-ing crazy.
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My general advice to incoming interns is to simplify your life as much as possible. Live close to the hospital. Set all your bills for autopay. If it's in your budget, hire a cleaning service (mine costs me $60 every 2 weeks - totally worth it to me). Sign up for Blue Apron or Plated. Etc, etc. Every thing you can eliminate having to take care of yourself means you'll be able to spend what little free time you do have doing stuff you enjoy.
 
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southernIM said:
It's not a trivial concern. LOT of stories out there about residents falling asleep behind the wheel.
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Is that still true with the new work hours? I know it was a huge problem in the 30 hour days, and I certainly wouldn't have tried that.... but 12 hour shifts, I don't know.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
Is that still true with the new work hours? I know it was a huge problem in the 30 hour days, and I certainly wouldn't have tried that.... but 12 hour shifts, I don't know.
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12 hr shifts in name often resemble closer to 14-16 hours in reality. 16 hour days x 6 days per week, + multiple day/night switches per month on some services are quite fatiguing.
 
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southernIM said:
12 hr shifts in name often resemble closer to 14-16 hours in reality. 16 hour days x 6 days per week, + multiple day/night switches per month on some services are quite fatiguing.
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That's fair. My program was very good about not letting us ever go over hours and I often forget that not everyone is as fortunate.
 
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I agree with the others--live as close as you can. I'm within 8 minutes of one hospital and 15 minutes of the other, and I couldn't be happier about it. It gives me plenty of time to enjoy life. Plus it saves me a ton on gas--and that's money that can go towards my loans.
 
VA Hopeful Dr said:
That's fair. My program was very good about not letting us ever go over hours and I often forget that not everyone is as fortunate.
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You don't need to break work hours to work a 16 hour night shift. My home hospital does 6 13s a week during nights, so if you're good at sleeping during the day you shouldn't be too tired there, but at one of our affiliated hospitals the system is 5 15s a week, which can easily run into a 16 hour shift. The upside of that system is that the night team starts taking admissions three hours before the day team signs out, so day team never goes over and can sometimes leave early, and the night team gets a full weekend so they see at least a little sunlight during the week. The down side is that its really easy to end up getting 4-6 hours of sleep a day, which by the end of the week feels a lot like finishing a 28 hour call.
 
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Agree with the others that you should live as close to the hospital as reasonably possible. You cannot begin to fathom right now how much that forty minute commute will detract from your already limited quality of life as an intern.
 
RangerBob said:
I agree with the others--live as close as you can. I'm within 8 minutes of one hospital and 15 minutes of the other, and I couldn't be happier about it. It gives me plenty of time to enjoy life. Plus it saves me a ton on gas--and that's money that can go towards my loans.
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I chose my residency program because it had only 1 location (2 hospitals, 1 campus) so I didn't even have to make that choice. Programs with multiple hospitals spread all over town (or multiple towns) dropped on my list regardless of how "good" they were.

I was 5 minutes by car, 10 minutes by bike (biking was faster because parking was a nightmare and they have valet bike parking) and the 2 days I had to snowshoe to work it only took 30 minutes.

Moral of the story? What they said. Live close. Commuting sucks.
 
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During residency, I literally could walk across the street to get to work. I look at it this way, as others have posted, free time is precious, you don't want to swallow up valuable hours of your week operating a motor vehicle excessively. Plus there's the cost savings in regards to gasoline, vehicle expenses. In addition, it was great, after a 30 hour call, to be able to just walk across the street and be sleeping in bed literally 5 minutes after leaving a shift.
 
southernIM said:
:scared::scared:
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I live in an area where it almost never snows. As a result, the infrastructure for dealing with snow is virtually non-existent. So anything more than 2-3 inches shuts the entire city down. When we got more than a foot during my first year of fellowship? Forget about it.
 
Please please please live as close as possible to your hospital. So much easier.
 
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I commuted 1 hour each way for an away rotation during 4th year. Granted, it was an elective and not actually intern but it still SUCKED. Can't imagine how much that would suck if I actually had real responsibilities and long work hours. I had to wake up super early, was constantly stressed about the traffic and being there on time. Plus, I was always in a bad mood when I arrived to the hospital or returned home because of sitting in rush hour traffic. You just waste SO MUCH TIME sitting your car! My commute was also scary - I had to travel on a major interstate that was full of 18-wheelers. There were always accidents, overturned trucks, etc... I almost never made it home in time for dinner and several times I was stuck in traffic jams for 2 and half hours. It also sucked because I felt like I couldn't hang out with anyone after work because I was already so tired and I knew I had a long drive ahead of me. I cannot imagine pulling a 24 hour shift or something and then having to be alert enough to drive such a long distance. Not to mention the cost of commuting..I drive an SUV and I was pumping gas at least 1x a week.

Because of this, I'm choosing to live a 15 minute walk (5 min drive) away from my hospital for intern year.
 
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