I am not a practicing surgeon, but I am currently doing away rotations in ortho. I think the question truly depends on what sub-specialty you chose and what area you chose to practice. If you are the only orthopaedic surgeon on call in a rural area, then whenever someone breaks a bone, you will be called...so that lifestyle aint all that good, but you will be rewarded financially because you are all they have. If you are at a busy academic center in the city (where most med students rotate) then what you will see is that the hand surgeons tend to take hand call (which can be rough or chill depending on who decides to use a skill saw while drunk again that night). Its the trauma ortho guys who tend to have to come in the most for pelvic, femur, tibia, supracondylar, etc. fractures. Where I'm at now, the trauma surgeon comes in quite often, however the hand guys almost never come in because we rarely see that stuff in terms of trauma.
So yeah, orthopaedic surgeons are busy....people break a ton of bones at 3 am on a saturday night. Its not chill like the ROADS specialities. But if you do a fellowship in hand, are work in a practice where someone else takes care of trauma calls, then it could be lifestyle friendly. But generally sleep doesn't come easy on a call night for an orthopaedic surgeon (at least where I am rotating).
