24 hour Call?

[Halaljello]

Ok, this probably makes me sound clueless but whatever....
I just learned that M3's at our school have 24 hour call during OB. That's an ass load of time for being in the hospital. We don't have residents in these hospitals though...its us and the attendings. Do other M3's have long calls like this?

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[DO_Surgeon]

When I did my OB rotation we had 24 hour call, but what it more enjoyable was we were required to be in house all night. No residents, my attending was in solo practice so he was on call 7 days a week. Two other students would be on the service at the same time, thus we divided up the call. So 2-3 times a week we would be on call 7a-7a. After we finished in the office that afternoon, we were expected to go home get what we needed for the night and go to the hospital and wait.... We did the H&Ps on any patient that came in, he would come in the next day and sign off on the chart unless she went into or was in active labor, then he would obviously be there immediately. It sucked, but I was able to get in on a number of deliveries and C-sections.

 

[Scooby Moo]

We also had 24-hour call at my school when I did my OB rotation, but only if the call was on a weekend (weekdays were overnight only). Happily, we were allowed to go home early post-call...not so with surgery or psych but that's another story.

With OB, the time seemed to go by really quickly thanks to all of the deliveries and C-sections taking place. Plus, I ended up doing the majority of my studying for the shelf exam during call (milk those hours you have to be there for all their worth)...allowing me to spend most of my out-of-the-hospital time with my family. 🙂

 

[DrQuinn]

Ok, this probably makes me sound clueless but whatever....
I just learned that M3's at our school have 24 hour call during OB. That's an ass load of time for being in the hospital. We don't have residents in these hospitals though...its us and the attendings. Do other M3's have long calls like this?

24 hours isn't that bad. And you wont' be on your feet busting your ass all 24 of those hours, most likely.

When I was an M3 we did 30-34 hour calls on OB/GYN. Its a great learning experience, though.

Q, DO

 

[Yosh]

When I was on ob/gyn last year...we were in from 5am till the following morning at 9 am...so that is almost 30hour call. Some nites were ran around ALL NITE long...other nites...I slept and was not paged once..and had the next day off post call.

Its exhausting...but all part of 3rd year...Gen Surg was basically the same...except perhaps a little longer...depending on what was going on..

 

[Mirror Form]

Ok, this probably makes me sound clueless but whatever....
I just learned that M3's at our school have 24 hour call during OB. That's an ass load of time for being in the hospital. We don't have residents in these hospitals though...its us and the attendings. Do other M3's have long calls like this?

24 hours is short! Wait until you do a trauma surg rotation. I haven't done ob-gyn yet, but on my M3 gen surg rotation I had to do TONS of 30 to 36 hour shifts. I'd start at 6am (assuming I didn't have too many patients to pre-round on), and if I was lucky they'd let me go the next day at noon. Although a few times I had to stay until 6pm the next day b/c I'd get stuck in the OR or something. Of course, that was just gen surg, which was way easier then trauma surg.

 

[fourthyear]

okay, now I'm gonna make you all feel like my residents make me feel when they start talking about the old days (pre-80hour workweek restrictions).

Just three short years ago when I was an MS3, our call on almost all rotations was pretty much all night in the hosptial and no rules about home early post call at all. Surg and OB you'd be there before 6am and rarely leave before 5pm the next day, often with no sleep at all - 4-5 hours of sleep was super lucky for these two specialties. And on surg, I got one day off the whole month, OB we got two weekends out of 4 off (4 days/month). Medicine call was only till 11pm, but then back in the hospital by 6am next day for a full day. Peds was all night, but got lots more sleep on this rotation than the others. We also often had some down-time to go off and study on medicine and peds while on call (but still on the med school or hospital grounds). We had residents with us on all these rotations.

Somehow none of this really seemed to be that bad. Sure you were tired on surg and ob, but you got to do so much fun stuff that the time usually went by pretty quick and you didn't notice you'd been there so long till you sat down a few minutes and started to fall asleep sitting up.

Now we all go home early post call, the new way of life. Really 30 hours straight is not bad at all, and you do sometimes sleep depending on how busy of a residency program you choose to go to. It's not so scary really - and sometimes you learn the most in the middle of the night. Med schools who don't have students stay for call I think are doing them a disservice b/c they arent' getting to see the full lifestyle of a specialty and get a real feel for what it's like.

 

[Blade28]

Ok, this probably makes me sound clueless but whatever....
I just learned that M3's at our school have 24 hour call during OB. That's an ass load of time for being in the hospital. We don't have residents in these hospitals though...its us and the attendings. Do other M3's have long calls like this?

Longest I ever stayed at the hospital was during my Surgery rotation...4 am until 6:30 pm the next night. Man that was a tough day. 🙁

 

[Lara]

My OB call is around 30 hours, except Friday or Saturday nights which are 24. One down, seven to go. 🙂 It's not much fun past midnight but you do get through it. I hate having to get up insanely early on a regular day to preround by 6:30 (even though I live super close, I'm not a fast person) but again there's nothing to do but suck it up. It's only 6 weeks and overall the hours are the worse part of the rotation so far. It's weird having your whole life suddenly revolve around the hospital. 😛 Even when I'm off I'm not up to doing much - thank goodness I have the long weekend to recoup.

 

[souljah1]

For OB/Gyn we arrive around 5:30am and leave the next day at noon (Q4). For those of us who do surgery at SFGH we also do the same thing. Otherwise, medicine, neuro, and peds all take call either q4 or q3q6 until midnight. Of course, if you get a patient around 11:15, then you might be there working them up until 2am or something like that. Any you have to be back around 6am for prerounding, so in many ways it is better to just take call o/n.

It's all good though. It is much better, in my opinion, than spending the first two years of my life (thankfully we don't have a curriculum like this) sitting through lecture after lecture. So far, I like 3rd year way more than the preclinical stuff.

 

[Discobolus]

It's all good though. It is much better, in my opinion, than spending the first two years of my life (thankfully we don't have a curriculum like this) sitting through lecture after lecture. So far, I like 3rd year way more than the preclinical stuff.

You spent the first 2 years of your LIFE sitting through lecture after lecture? Wow, you must be pretty advanced, I was learning to crawl, walk, and speak at that age. 😀

 

[souljah1]

oops...

I meant the first two years of med school...hahahahahahahaha.

 

[lindyloohoo]

when i asked our dean if we would be able to go home early post call (ie follow the 80 hr work week restrictions), he said that we as students will never be in a position to kill/hurt anybody so there's no worry if we're sleepy or not. from what i understand we could potentially start at 6am (if not earlier) one day and go to 6 pm (or later) the next. honestly, do you think i'll learn anything when i'm half asleep?

 

[Jaded Soul]

when i asked our dean if we would be able to go home early post call (ie follow the 80 hr work week restrictions), he said that we as students will never be in a position to kill/hurt anybody so there's no worry if we're sleepy or not. from what i understand we could potentially start at 6am (if not earlier) one day and go to 6 pm (or later) the next. honestly, do you think i'll learn anything when i'm half asleep?

Post-call isn't about learning, it's about getting work done as quickly as possible and getting out of the hospital...

 

[Blade28]

It's all good though. It is much better, in my opinion, than spending the first two years of my life (thankfully we don't have a curriculum like this) sitting through lecture after lecture. So far, I like 3rd year way more than the preclinical stuff.

Agreed. We had some pretty brutal calls, especially in OB/GYN and Surg (no post-call!), but in the end it's all worth it. The amount of learning that goes on in third year is just tremendous.

 

[mward04]

24 hours is short! Wait until you do a trauma surg rotation. I haven't done ob-gyn yet, but on my M3 gen surg rotation I had to do TONS of 30 to 36 hour shifts. I'd start at 6am (assuming I didn't have too many patients to pre-round on), and if I was lucky they'd let me go the next day at noon. Although a few times I had to stay until 6pm the next day b/c I'd get stuck in the OR or something. Of course, that was just gen surg, which was way easier then trauma surg.

I'm glad someone said it!

 

[shorrin]

I have q9 and 27 hour call. I actually prefer call as there are no other students and you get more attention. Our director will let us go home after grand rounds in the AM but wants us to stay for lectures all day if there are any so it could easily turn into 35 hour call. I can't complain though, when I bumped into a freind doing surg she told me they have q2. Q2!!!! When the hell do you sleep or study?

I'm not used to it though, I fell asleep six times in grand rounds with an attending sitting behind me. Does the lack of sleep get any easier???

Does anyone have any general advice on ob?

 

[neilc]

when i have weekend ob call, it goes either from fri nite at 730pm to sunday nite 730pm or sat morning 730am, to monday 730am. then, we have a normal monday.

24 hours is childs play. 🙂

 

[Doc_Thks_JC]

Hi,
During my 3rd year I was on call q6 and we stayed in house for between 26 - 32 hours. It was quite experience but alot of fun. The thing is that as a student you will not have to do any admits usually after 2am so you get to go to the on call room and get some sleep before rounding in the am. For the new med students that are wondering what I am saying here it goes:
When on day of call you come in preround on your pts, go to morning rounds, go to work rounds, help the residents in afternoon, look up labs on your pts and fellow student's pts to help them out, do all admits that come in the afternoon until around 12am unless your resident doesn't like you then it goes until later. Get to on call room around 12 am, get some sleep, get up at 6:30 am Preround on your pts, do morning rounds, go to work rounds, then go home around 12-1pm. Hope that gives you a typical on call night for med student in most institutions and depending on how hard you want to work.
Hope that helps,


"Wish you all good luck in med school and your careers, and remember as a student if you don't know its best to fuss up and say you don't know than to utilize your semi-intelligence for a BS answer! Your preceptor WILL know! Part of being a good doctor is realizing your inadequacies and seeking help when you can! Because guaranteed, the smartest doc you know does not know everything in medicine, and guess what neither will you"

 

[Gauss]

Fun??? FUN??? My god you people have some sick notions of what is fun in this life. I don't recall sleep-deprived delirium ever being fun. The world is a blur, everthing is fuzzy, you smell, you fell sticky, you're the most apathetic person in the world, you make mistakes, you're a useless zombie. I hated all night call, never learned a friggin thing, and most of the time ran around doing useless crap like finding the appropriate resident to wake up.
I never slept on trauma, surgery (maybe 1-2 hrs), and ob. Almost got into numerous car accidents by being post call. Usually went 30 hours or more.
It's not fun, it sucks. It's punishment.

 

[supercut]

My M3 year we took 24 hour call on all rotations except psych and family practice.

Medince call was Q5 overnight (we had a short call day between where we just took admissions during the day). Peds was Q4, and usually very, very busy...th ewhole team was usually up all nite with admissions. Surgery contained a couple weeks of trauma which was q2 call. The rest was Q4. OB was Q4, and the students were responsible for seeing all the pts in the OB eval (basically an OB ED) first, and it was often very, very busy. Plus we participated in or did (with supervision, of course) all the deliveries and scrubbed all the c-sections. If it was slow we were expected to pre-fill out discharge papers, scripts, etc (OB is pretty standardized).

It sucked, but it was also a great learning opportunity. The majority of the procedures and interesting cases I got were in the middle of the night. I did 10 deliveries unassisted. I got very good a writing H&P's very efficently.

It paid off when I became an intern. I was already used to staying up all night, and so all I had to worry about was figuring out what to do. Plus it was helpful that I was able to write H&P very quickly.

I was suprised to learn that many med students don't take overnight call. I think you miss out if you don't. I think you should be able to go home post call, though, just like the residents do.

 

[Jaded Soul]

Surgery contained a couple weeks of trauma which was q2 call.

😱 How much learning is going on with q2 call? Or ever better, how safe is patient care delivery on a q2 service? Some of my trauma residents talked about doing q2 call, but that was back like 10-15 years ago. I thought those programs were long gone.

 

[Starflyr]

Q2? egads.

And I thought my schedule this time round was pretty rough...Q4, with 33 hours on, in the (hopping!) newborn/transitional/intermediate nursery and NICU. 1 day off per weekend. Of course, its my AI, so its just like intern's call, which is cool with me b/c its interesting. I just never see my family b/c Im alseep whenever Im at home.

I think I would die of sleep deprivation if ANYBODY made me take Q2 call! 😴

Oh, and I just wanted to add that OB call her was 24 hours for my year (now its 2 weeks days, 1 week nights), and it SUCKED. It sucked more than Pedi's 36 hour call b/c on OB, they would fail you if you 1) slept (even if it was quiet) 2) studied or 3) sat down. So you had to walk around "looking busy" even when it was dead at 3 am. 😡 I am SOOO glad that's over.

Star

 

[Scooby Moo]

It sucked more than Pedi's 36 hour call b/c on OB, they would fail you if you 1) slept (even if it was quiet) 2) studied or 3) sat down. So you had to walk around "looking busy" even when it was dead at 3 am. 😡 I am SOOO glad that's over.

Wow...that's ridiculous. I would've pulled all of my hair out if call (and grading) was like that on my OB rotation. 😱

 

[supercut]

Actually, the way the q2 call was set up was that your shift was 24 hours. It was more like working in the ED. We did H&P on all the pts in the less criticial trauma area and responded to all the trauma bay kind of traumas. Plus covered any cases in the OR. Upper level residents/M4 covered the ICU. The chief oversaw everything. The whole team left at 7-8 am after the shift was over and we signed out all the pts. Once a week we had a post call clinic that would last til noon or 2pm. And sometimes there was a conference that we had to go to. Acutally, I loved it. And it was easier than the 24 hour call with a full post call day that I did on some of the other services.

And you can learn plenty on q2 call. A lot of learning in the clincial years is learning by doing, not by studying or being formally taught. If you are allowed to do a lot, you will learn. I think some schools are weak in that students are really mostly just observers. We were integeral team members, and our work had an impact on how well the night went. What you learn is little stuff, as well as a comfort with making some decisions and seeing how various sitiuations are handled. Plus there is value in learning how to get through a busy night. This served me well when I started as an intern. In fact, I was ahead of my fellow interns just in my ablilty to juggle work and stay calm when my pager was going off every 2 miuntes. Some of the nurses asked me if I had been a nurse before because I was able to remain so calm and make decisions.

That said, as students we were allowed to swap out and sleep for a couple hours a night if it wasn't too busy. So espeically on days before clinic we did do that. But the residents almost never slept. And usually it was so busy that the time would fly by. When you have 3 critical trauma pts come in one after another, you'll be incredilby busy for 4-5 hours and it seems like it was only about 30 minutes.

And now q2 call really isn't permitted any more.