Family Medicine residency lifestyle/hours?

[snowys435]

Hi there,

I was trying to find some good new/recent posts on this but I haven't. Everything I see is several years old so I was wondering if someone could post about residency life now/ what attending lifestyle is like?

Thanks

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[Merely]

good question, also interested in this!

 

[hsmooth]

I finished FM residency in 2014. I probably averaged working about 50-55 hours per week. Some months were super easy, and other months were brutal and worked close to the max 80 hours per week. My intern year was the worst, and 2nd and 3rd years I can't really complain too much about. Call days in-hospital were tiring, but even then I was still able to get at least a few hours of sleep per night on average.

 

[cabinbuilder]

I graduated in 2009. Most rotations were easy with a 40 hour week since you do rotations in clinics that are 9-5. Inpatient medicine was the hardest since we took 80% of the patients on the hospital service. I could see anywhere from 5-25 patients on a given day before clinic started at 9am. Of course we had 7:30am morning report in there too. Usually we would at least lay eyes on everyone, fix the major issues and do "long rounds" after clinic with the attending and do our chart notes then. Those months I did 60-70 hr week. We did not have a true surgery rotation in residency so our schedule for that was cush. Our call schedule was actually good with each resident taking 3 call days a month.

Currently as an attending I work 10-14 days a month in urgent care. The rest I have off or I can pick up extra shifts at an hourly wage. I don't take call. Some weeks I work 60 hrs, some weeks I pick up extra shifts and work 84. But I have 7 days off in a row twice a month so it's worth it for me. I don't have kids at home either so I can go on vacation every other week if I want or sometimes I still do locums work in the rural areas that are short handed to keep my skills up (I currently work UC in a small city that's mostly sinus infections, etc).

 

[Merely]

So overall, would FM be considered among the cushiest residencies/lifestyles as an attending? I feel like it's easier than say IM even though they do have some overlap.

 

[AMEHigh]

So overall, would FM be considered among the cushiest residencies/lifestyles as an attending? I feel like it's easier than say IM even though they do have some overlap.

It completely depends on the job. I don't think you can characterize the specialty as well as you can some others because some do all outpatient, some do all inpatient, some do urgent care, etc. I think that's the beauty of the specialty, there are a wide variety of options. It can be anywhere from part-time hours all the way up to 60 hours per week (or more).

I think at my program we average about 50-55 hours per week. Obviously inpatient months are the longest. We don't take over night call in the hospital, so that is nice. But not all family med programs are like that.

 

[linguistafeliz]

At my residency the hours are pretty long on inpatient months (definitely hitting 80 hours per week). But on outpatient months they are much more reasonable more like 40-50 hours per week sometimes even less.

 

[FrustratedFamDoc]

Nothing Cush about my first 2 years of residency, especially intern year. I finished in 2012 and there have been a lot of changes since I was there to make it less demanding. If someone offered me $500,000 to repeat my intern year, I don't think I would take the offer.

Attending life is pretty good. 4 1/2 days a week out pt, no holidays or weekends, phone call every 6th weekend. I work for a hospital owned group and my teaser salary expired over a year ago so things could certainly be better, but they could be worse too.

 

[okokok]

I work for a hospital owned group and my teaser salary expired over a year ago so things could certainly be better, but they could be worse too.

I'm curious what the difference is between your current salary and your teaser salary? Thanks.



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[FrustratedFamDoc]

Currently, in the 4th year of my contract, I'm actually on course to better my teaser salary by about 10% if my projections play out similarly to this last quarter. I built my patient panel from scratch. 2 years after my teaser salary got 'adjusted,' my salary declined 25% right away and they went to a base +RVU. It takes a while to build a practice and you can be in for a rude awakening when the teaser expires.

 

[okokok]

It takes a while to build a practice and you can be in for a rude awakening when the teaser expires.

Thanks for your reply. Would you mind sharing some general info on how you build a practice? Is it by advertising (eg newspapers, billboards, whatever), word of mouth, or something else? If you're part of a hospital-owned group, can you/do you still recruit your own patients or are they assigned when they are referred or call the office looking for a PCP?

I've had a lot of people tell me I can "tailor my practice" to the population or pathology I'm most interested in treating. How does one do this? I assume you can't hear a new patient's complaints and then say, nah I don't feel like seeing you again, find someone else. (I mean, I'm sure you can, but I would feel too guilty to do this for anything but extreme cases.)

For context, I'm a med student (probably obvious) in the middle of my third year trying to decide on a specialty and wanting to have a better idea of how a career beyond residency will look.

Thanks again.

 

[FrustratedFamDoc]

You ask good questions and I'm happy to share my experience.

When I signed on, I joined the hospital group with the plan to assume my partner's patients once he retires. It's a good plan, but he's still really enjoying work and really just not ready yet. I was only seeing hs overflow when I joined on. I was barely seeing 12 a day. The group did advertise in the paper, but it really didn't amount to much.

I opened my practice to anybody and everybody. I didn't turn anyone away. You can Taylor yor practice to anyone but if your numbers aren't gong in the right direction, expect to be hounded by yor corporate overlords asking how they can 'help.' I'm nice to my patents (you'd be surprised how rare this can be), and they refer family and friends to me. I see a lot of hospital and er employees and they refer to me regularly. Getting in to see me doesn't take weeks. If someone calls me and really needs to get in, I generally can work them in that day. I have a good relationship with community specialists. My wife is the nurse of an orthopod in town. One of her colleagues wans to get an appointment with me and asked me today. I'm working her in on Friday at 11. That stuff really makes an impression.

 

[W19]

You ask good questions and I'm happy to share my experience.

When I signed on, I joined the hospital group with the plan to assume my partner's patients once he retires. It's a good plan, but he's still really enjoying work and really just not ready yet. I was only seeing hs overflow when I joined on. I was barely seeing 12 a day. The group did advertise in the paper, but it really didn't amount to much.

I opened my practice to anybody and everybody. I didn't turn anyone away. You can Taylor yor practice to anyone but if your numbers aren't gong in the right direction, expect to be hounded by yor corporate overlords asking how they can 'help.' I'm nice to my patients (you'd be surprised how rare this can be), and they refer family and friends to me. I see a lot of hospital and er employees and they refer to me regularly. Getting in to see me doesn't take weeks. If someone calls me and really needs to get in, I generally can work them in that day. I have a good relationship with community specialists. My wife is the nurse of an orthopod in town. One of her colleagues wans to get an appointment with me and asked me today. I'm working her in on Friday at 11. That stuff really makes an impression.

Amazing...