Typical day for a radiologist?

Is there such a thing as a typical day for a radiology resident or a staff radiologist? I am trying to get a sense of the day-to-day work of the average radiologist.

10am- Climb out of bed
10:35am- Descend into darkness
12:00pm- Climb into the light in search of coffee; shrieks loudly in pain due to not being use to sunlight
2:25 pm- Calls it a day due to sheer exhaustion; encounters a patient, runs and hides out of fear of the unknown.



Sorry...couldn't resist.....

🙂
I figured I would get a reply like this at some point, but I didn't expect it to be the first one! Congrats on exceeding expectations! 😀

Anyone else have anything to add?

Praetorian said:

10am- Climb out of bed
10:35am- Descend into darkness
12:00pm- Climb into the light in search of coffee; shrieks loudly in pain due to not being use to sunlight
2:25 pm- Calls it a day due to sheer exhaustion; encounters a patient, runs and hides out of fear of the unknown.



Sorry...couldn't resist.....

Click to expand...

There is nothing like a 'typical day' Many factors go into what makes a 'typical' day for any individual radiologist.

- presence of residents/fellows
- outpatient center vs hospital based
- academic vs. community hospital
- size of radiology group
- your own subspecialization

A common setting is a subspecialized diagnostic radiologist working in a midsize group (10-20 radiologists) at a community hospital with outpatient imaging centers scattered throughout the community. While on one of the hospital rotations, the 'typical' schedule might look something like:

8am-10am: over-read and dictate the studies interpreted by the ED physician overnight (mostly plain-radiographs) or the night-hawk (mostly cross-sectional). Follow-up on discrepancies, referrals to QA etc.

10am-noon: interpret/dicate whatever modality/specialty you read that day. Interrupted by occasional procedures (mammo-locs, US-locs, US biopsies, fluoroscopy).

noon-1pm: tumor board/vascular conference/neurotumor conference... (while nibbling on cold drug-rep provided Olive-Garden take-out).

1pm-6pm: plow through a list of studies accumulated throughout the day. (interrupted by the occasional trip to the Espresso maker to top off the caffeine stores and consultations for clinicians on studies performed elsewhere).

The beauty of rads is that your typical day is whatever you want it to be. The above post is one example. Here's another (for IR)

get to work ~7Am. Quickie round on any inpatient procedures from the day before or anyone else you feel needs to be checked out. Generally write 1 line notes.

~8-noon Cases: review films, labs history...do cases could be TIPS, easy vascular access stuff, maybe RF ablations, vertebroplasty, UFE etc etc depending on day and practise.

1-4 - (one day a week) Clinic follow ups and new patients. Generally quick H+P, explain procedure, answer questions etc, usuall OP clinic stuff. Occasionally interupted by clinicians for consults etc.

1-4 other days - more cases and or academic time and or general radiology film reading depending on your practise.

hey koil, thanks for your post. i actually have always wondered what a typical day for ir would be like, especially because i feel that a lot of people have emphasized to me that it has a lifestyle closer to gen surg than to diagnostic radiology. your post, though, appears more in line with the ama-freida stat of an average of 50.2 hour weeks for ir fellows. i'm guessing, though, that there is a reasonable degree of variance, and i'm wondering if anyone has any idea what contributes most to that variance: call responsibilities or perhaps some of the factors that f_w mentioned above for diagnostic?

In fellowship, most people do work hard. 50.2 hours would be a rather low estimate.

In practice, it is very variable. Here are a couple of factors that will make your IR call busier:
- busy trauma center
- transplant service
- busy urologists
- surgeons with poor clinical judgement
- a 'they order it, we'll do it' policy
- commercial dialysis centers (with p#%%poor personnel)

IR tends to take more frequent call than DR. Out of a 15 person group, only 3-4 might take IR call.

How many cases you do on call depends on how much calcium you and your division chief have in your spine, but more importantly the level of expertise of your referring clinicians (if you have actual vascular surgeons or fellows evaluating the 'cold legs', the number of emergent leg angios goes way down. Most of them turn out to be 'new onset rest pain' who will do quite well overnight with a good helping of fentanyl and a heparin drip)

0900-1400: Bitch about the films and procedures they have to do/read.
1400-1500: Get out of doing anything else for the day.
1500 - ??: Who knows? All I know is they are nowhere near the hospital.

dobonedoc said:

0900-1400: Bitch about the films and procedures they have to do/read.
1400-1500: Get out of doing anything else for the day.
1500 - ??: Who knows? All I know is they are nowhere near the hospital.

Click to expand...

In case you didn't notice, someone already made that d#)_( joke right at the beginning of the thread.

There are a lot of jokers out there. Usually we play poker in the morning and golf in the afternoon. We read our studies on our Treo's from the 19th hole and laptops when on call from home. NOT!
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Your day will depend upon what year you are in residency, what service you are on, and if there are other residents around. Call frequency will depend on how many residents you have, obviously.

Typical day:
0730-830: AM conference/Hotseat
840-1230: Read studies
1230-1330: PM conference/Hotseat
1330-1630 Read studies

If on CT:
Same but read studies and coordinate Biopsies/drainages and perform them, answer the phone, entertain clinicians, attend tumor board, etc.

If on IR:
730-1700: Do cases.
1700-1900: Pre-op/Consent patients/Rounds on patients
Get called day or night to come in for emergencies on top of daily schedule

If on short call:
1630-2000: Read CT/MR/CR and do ultrasounds, myself, answer the phone, and go over studies with clinicians.

If on night float:
2000-0800: Everything on short call + teleradiology.

Call: not much time to watch TV, etc since the workload is piling up by the minute.

If on Pediatrics/Children's hospital
0730 - 1630: Read studies, go over studies with clinicians
If on call: Read studies, go over studies with clinicians, QC Xrays, Push IV contrast manually, QC ultrasounds from 1630 to 0800.

When on call, you are it. Nothing gets surgery (except for a sebaceous cyst) or admitted without some type of imaging. Some clinicians need more input from you than others and some look at their own studies.

You have yearly INSERVICE EXAMS rating you against the residents of your respective year and three sets of boards: Physics, Written and Orals. It REQUIRES a good deal of reading outside of work hours. Most rotations require submitting 2 teaching files a month which are presented at conferences and some rotations require oral presentations of those cases to the attendings/technicians.

We give only 3 lectures a year; one of which is required to advance to the next year.