Single parents and residency

[Gordon Sims]

I'm just curious how compatible psychiatry residencies (esp. the intern year) are with being a single parent raising a young school-age child. Can it be done?

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[peppy]

I'm just curious how compatible psychiatry residencies (esp. the intern year) are with being a single parent raising a young school-age child. Can it be done?

Yes, I'm a psych resident and I know some residents who have done it. Certain programs are more family friendly than others though so try to investigate the programs you are thinking of ahead of applying.

 

[whopper]

This issue has been discussed. Past threads may be of assistance. Do a search on the forum's search tabs.

Repeating what I mentioned before and above, several programs are family friendly. Others may look at you with disdain knowing that you have responsibilities outside of work. Why? They know they might not be able to get as much work out of you. It's a combination of them wanting to get work out of residents, an old-school mentality that residency is about suffering, and a worry that at the worst moment where you're needed, you may have to leave work because your kid needs to go to the doctor.

A good program will be family friendly. Hardly any program will reveal themselves to not be family friendly because it's not PC. It's a glass ceiling. Some workplaces don't want to hire the guy with the long hair, but will not openly tell the person he was not hired because of it. They'll just send a nice letter saying something to the effect of "thanks" without mention of the hair--but the hair was the real reason.

For that reason, some applicants I've noticed just openly state what's going on because they'd rather get rejected from such a program and they'll be steered towards the family-friendly programs---and that's what they want. That's great and the ideal situation if you are a single parent. Unfortunately, not everyone can be in that position. Some people are in the position where they will not have many choices and the revelation that they are a single parent to a program may further cut down the choices available.

 

[carlosc1dbz]

I'm just curious how compatible psychiatry residencies (esp. the intern year) are with being a single parent raising a young school-age child. Can it be done?

I am curious to know what people constitute as being family friendly.

 

[sella turcica]

I'm interested too since there's probably a decent chance my wife will start incubating our first embryo while I'm still a PGY-something.

 

[peppy]

Clearly you want to pay attention to the call requirements/work hours between programs. There are places where the normal schedule is 8am-5pm with little or no overnight call and there are places where historically interns have pushed the 80 hour workweek with long days and frequent call (though with the new rules next year I am not sure how the latter kind of program will be changing). Obviously if you have a family you'll probably be happier in the former kind of program (although someone at Cincy claimed that one of the new parents in their residency got more sleep on call despite the Q4 schedule than they did at home with the baby).

You also probably want to try to find out how the program deals with people who have to take time off for illness/pregnancy/etc. (although you want to be careful who you ask and how you ask it to avoid giving the impression you're planning to be an unreliable slacker).

I interviewed at one program where, because one of the residents had been injured, everyone else had to take more call to cover for him (and it was a small program, so that did affect the others in a major way). You can imagine that sort of system might cause resentment to brew if someone becomes pregnant or has an emergency with their child and the others suffer because of it.
In contrast, I remember the people at University of Rochester explicitly mentioning that because the residents are not essential to their psych service functioning, it's not a big deal to them if one needs to call in sick.

I would also just try to pay attention to the culture and atmosphere of the program. The leadership at some programs will be more friendly and laidback while at other places they may be more intense and serious. There are residencies where the residents are all pretty friendly with each other and others where the residents all keep to themselves and don't spend time outside of work together. I think in general, residencies where your fellow residents like you and think of you as a friend are more likely to be accomodating of issues like parenting than those where the other residents are just coworkers who may even have gunnerish issues left over from med school.

 

[fiatslug]

the most important thing is where will you have the most help? do you have family located near one place? What about the child's other parent--are they involved? It takes a village to raise a child in residency. Locate yourself near helpful family, if possible, as that's going to be incalculably valuable. I only know of one truly cushy psych residency--San Mateo in the Bay Area. No call. Everywhere else, you're going to have to deal with call, and it is worst in intern year.

How old is/are your kid(s)?