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Depends on the rotation.

Psych and family med you'll get weekends off likely
Most other rotations you'll go 6 days a week with one weekend day.
 
At my school, for inpatient rotations, students do 6 days on, one day off or 12 days on, 2 days off. Outpatient can have weekends off.
 
premedtx123 said:
Incoming MS1 here trying to figure out how my schedule will be like during med school. I was looking at the website, but our school's academic calendar for MS3 and 4 only gives the blocks and the vacation schedule. It doesn't really show a lot of detailed information.

My question is: Do we have the weekends off during clerkship or are we working nonstop during the blocks, and only taking 4 vacations a year? If the vacation schedule doesn't include the major holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, does that mean that we need to work during those days????

Please correct me if I am wrong. The clerkship years seem horrifying. Do we have time to spend time with family and friends during clerkship?
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It’s a good question . Current M3 here .

depends on rotation and school , but you definitely get some days off . Depends if it is inpatient or outpatient service as well . In family medicine clinic now - all weekends off, get off at 5 max. When on inpatient you will work some weekends. Surgical rotations are brutal .
But yes, you have time for family and such . But it IS a rough year . But if you get good at multitasking and time management you’ll be ok
 
You will have less time during M3. M4 will be off and on. You'll be super busy during sub-I season but less so when you're interviewing (mostly traveling for interviews). Most people have even more time on the tail end when you're just waiting to graduate basically. M3 is tough because you have a ton of cores which are pretty formulaic. In general, you'll get weekends on the outpatient services like family medicine or outpatient neurology or psychiatry. Stuff like that. For inpatient services like medicine or surgery, expect to get 1 weekend day off and not being able to control which day that is.

Same for holidays. If you're on an outpatient service and the office is closed for the holiday, then you're off. But if you're inpatient, you may not be off because somebody still has to be around to take care of patients in the hospital during holidays. So you'll probably be with whichever resident that is.
 
Depends on your school as well. I got the thanksgiving and christmas holidays off as our schedule blocked them off.
 
School and rotation dependent. I had at least one day off every weekend on surgery and had every other weekend completely off (and sometimes two weekends in a row). And many times I got out earlier than I did on inpatient peds or psych. On psych and peds, I worked literally one weekend day over 10 weeks. Third year doesn’t necessarily have to be the brutal gulag everyone makes it out to be.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
School and rotation dependent. I had at least one day off every weekend on surgery and had every other weekend completely off (and sometimes two weekends in a row). And many times I got out earlier than I did on inpatient peds or psych. On psych and peds, I worked literally one weekend day over 10 weeks. Third year doesn’t necessarily have to be the brutal gulag everyone makes it out to be.
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I think i worked three weekend days all of M3 and no holidays. It doesnt have to be terrible.
 
If it's an inpatient service, you're gonna work at least one weekend day per week. Outpatient is typically M-F with weekends off. Students were usually off on holidays. Plus, you'll probably have lectures/school activities to go to every week outside of the actual clinical work.

Unless you're gunning for something like an ortho residency spot and staying after 24 hour calls to scrub cases post-call, it's not that bad.

As an attending, it's whatever. I worked in the hospital everyday for the last 3 weeks. Got a nice holiday weekend now though.
 
Surgery was one of my easier rotations but it was during summer of pandemic. Weirdly peds and psych were actually most hours logged (70-80/week). FM and OBGYN were suepr chill (30-45 hour weeks). IM was more like 60 for me.
 
I’m in my 4th year and I’ve had to work only a few weekends during all of 3rd year. Really just depends on school and rotations.
 
I only had a few weekend shift. Depends on the school and the site. Sometimes it was like "work 2 saturdays during rotation", sometimes they wanted a few night shifts, sometimes it was just 6-6.

Honestly I don't think they want you there. Most of the time when residents are on during off hours they just want to get work done and relax, rather than babysit med students.

Honestly its not something to worry about. You'll find time and by the time 3rd year rolls around, honestly, you have no choice and somehow most people make it through.
 
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Each clerkship is like its own job that you have to do, with its own terms. Don't go in with the mentality of having weekends and holidays off. Be prepared to stay longer during the day. You will need to get the best evals from attendings possible.
 
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