Fellowship hours/in-patient call

[TheRoc]

Just curious--how many weeks of in-patient call do you take during your fellowship? This includes weekends of carrying the pager and rounding. If you feel like it, please let me know which program you are at (or recently graduated from). When I interviewed for my fellowship, I was told 8-9 weeks. Some of my now co-fellows were told 10-12 weeks. Now after starting, we come to find out it's more than double that (ie. >20 weeks...surprise!).

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[lord_jeebus]

Suck it up. Fellowship will be over before you know it. A reputation as a complainer will not help, and there's likely nothing you can do to reduce your weekend burden anyway.

 

[lobelsteve]

My fellowship at emory via pmr was completely deficient in inpatient. And we never even got to take any call.

 

[Ducttape]

Every other to every third week of carrying chronic pain pager, weekend rounding on acute and chronic inpatients, usually til bout 2pm. So, um, somewhere round 20 weeks?

 

[emd123]

It'll go by fast. Plus, Pain call is easy compared to something like Trauma surgery, SICU, Ortho and rotations like that. Less than one year to go. Start counting the days!

 

[TheRoc]

It'll go by fast. Plus, Pain call is easy compared to something like Trauma surgery, SICU, Ortho and rotations like that. Less than one year to go. Start counting the days!

Thanks! Good way to think about things. 340 it is!

 

[Prof Moriarty]

All seems like reasonable advice. Also, programs should endeavor to accurately describe themselves. Not all pain call is equal - there are some programs with more difficult call, which is not necessarily a bad thing and might even accompany a richer clinical experience. But how would you like it if you signed up for a job with q4 call and you showed up and it was q2? In training there is probably no worthwhile recourse and 1 year will fly by anyway. But it's not unreasonable to expect that programs should describe themselves accurately and it sounds like there was some miscommunication/misunderstanding here.

 

[TheRoc]

All seems like reasonable advice. Also, programs should endeavor to accurately describe themselves. Not all pain call is equal - there are some programs with more difficult call, which is not necessarily a bad thing and might even accompany a richer clinical experience. But how would you like it if you signed up for a job with q4 call and you showed up and it was q2? In training there is probably no worthwhile recourse and 1 year will fly by anyway. But it's not unreasonable to expect that programs should describe themselves accurately and it sounds like there was some miscommunication/misunderstanding here.

Thanks for validating my point. I suppose the job trial is going to present much of the same. Oh well, lesson learned. Next time, I'll think twice and get things on paper before I move my family halfway across the country.

 

[LocusCoeruleus]

We do a week of inpatient call once every 5 weeks at our program. Although I'm not a fan of inpatient rounding it's a great learning opportunity to see a different side of pain and also get some one on one teaching time with the attendings.