Is it alright to ask about work hours per week during the pre-interview dinner with residents? I don't want to appear lazy, but I also want to have a clear idea of what I am signing up for. Probably not as much with the actual interviewers right?
Acceptable to ask about work hours?
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It's a subjective question. Everyone is going to be different. You are better off asking questions about the rhythm of the school. How frequent are tests? How often are there mandatory classes? Is it systems block curriculum vs. traditional? P/F or graded in nonclinical years?. This will give you a better idea of the workload. Also you can ask about extracurriculars or fun activities outside of school. This will give you an idea of much time they have for nonschool stuff.
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AnatomyGrey12
Pretty sure they are talking about work hours in residency, not medical school.
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The answer probably depends on what you're interviewing for. Is it surgery? If so, wouldn't ask about work hours. I think the risk that it could be misconstrued as you not wanting to work hard outweighs the benefit. We may lie to you anyway, just as everyone lies on how they log hours at some point.
For surgical specialties, I think in every program there will be some rotations that go over 80 hours per week every week. Some rotations may go over 100 hours per week. This is often balanced out by rotations with lighter hours.
I actually don't like being limited to 80 hours per week and having people kick me out of the hospital to avoid violations. I want to stay to learn and contribute. I think once you actually start doing 80 per week, it doesn't feel like that much. Others may differ in their take on it.
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Is it okay to ask about call schedules at least? How about questions about scheduling?
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Lol, you're right. Asking about extracurriculars is still a more elegant way of assessing how much time residents have.
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Scheduling and call questions are fine to ask.
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AnatomyGrey12
That's actually a really subtle way to ask that, ask them what they do in their free time and if they say, "what free time" then you have your answer.
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If you're not asking about call schedules you're setting yourself up for misery...
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What’s a call schedule?
Anesthesia. Just want to get a gauge on if it's a workhorse program (avg 60+ hours a week) or a normal program (50-60 hours).
I know 60+ is still nothing compared to surgical hours, but it really is specialty specific and has to be placed in context of the norm.
I know 60+ is still nothing compared to surgical hours, but it really is specialty specific and has to be placed in context of the norm.
I'm a psychiatry resident and I would probably find it odd if someone straight up asked about work hours. There are ways of asking about this that don't come across as gauche, but "how many hours a week do you spend in the hospital?" is not one of them (at least for me). Part of this may also be that in psychiatry, even the hardest-working residencies tend to be pretty reasonable with the exception of intern year which sucks no matter what. Inquiring about hours in a field where the standard outside if PGY-1 seems to be like 45-50 hrs/wk does appear to be sort of lazy.
You could ask me what a typical week was like for me in intern year, PGY-2, etc. and I would answer honestly and in detail. I would not find this off-putting in the way asking directly about work hours is off-putting. This is a reasonable question asked in a reasonable way and you would get the information you're looking for.
Asking about call schedule is fine, but my experience was that most places will answer this question to some degree in their presentations on interview day. If you ask about this, just don't be the person who seems to be preoccupied with it.
You could ask me what a typical week was like for me in intern year, PGY-2, etc. and I would answer honestly and in detail. I would not find this off-putting in the way asking directly about work hours is off-putting. This is a reasonable question asked in a reasonable way and you would get the information you're looking for.
Asking about call schedule is fine, but my experience was that most places will answer this question to some degree in their presentations on interview day. If you ask about this, just don't be the person who seems to be preoccupied with it.
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Ask them how many times a week do they have sexual intercourse.
The number only will mean a lot of things.
Yeah, this is definitely specialty-dependent. If you asked psych residents to work 100 hrs/wk outside of our intern year, there would be near-universal revolt. To most of us, that is craziness. Plus, I do believe that our job requires a degree of empathy to people who are being real jerks or trying to assault staff daily that is impossible for most people if they're in the hospital that often. Working that much would make me miserable.
Even so, as I said before, questions about work hours can also come across as odd in fields like mine for the reason that, compared to other specialties, we actually don't generally expect that much from people in terms of hours. It really does come off as lazy to me if a person seems to be trying to find the psych residency with the lowest hours. I mean, come on, our lives are actually pretty good.
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Eh, I kind of disagree. I asked about hours (indirectly) at every interview I went on. Not because I was looking to find programs with very low hours (<50), but because I wanted to avoid psych programs where 65-70 hr weeks are the norm (of which I did encounter 1 and have heard of a couple others). I've got a family and I wanted to make sure that I'd be able to spend some time with them in residency other than saying goodnight for the 10 minutes I'm home before bedtime. I always asked about general number of hours (more or less than 60 was my mental cutoff), call (is there home call or do I have to stay overnight), and weekend shifts (how often, how long, etc).
Imo it doesn't really show that someone is trying to be lazy unless it really comes off that way. When I talked about work hours it was always in the context of work-life balance and making sure that the program understood that I had a family and that residency wasn't my sole priority. For some fields that's not okay, but I think in most fields asking what the schedule is like (including total hours) is fine.
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Dude some people don’t want to work 60 hours/wk in psych residency so asking about work hours is very reasonable to know what you’re getting into considering some places work double others
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For what it's worth, I don't think it's awkward at all to bring up work hours. I did at almost every pre-interview dinner, e.g., "What's your typical day like?" "What are your hours like?" I didn't lead with that question, but it felt perfectly normal to ask in the conversation. I'm an IR/DR resident BTW, so maybe it's specialty dependent. It went fine for radiology and my prelim interviews. It was particularly common at the latter.
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Imaging any other job in the world where you didn’t know how much you would end up working when you signed up.
I don't know, 65-70 hrs/wk seems very rare. In any case, you can disagree with me but my point is that there are people like me out there and if you ask about hours explicitly, even in psych there will be people for whom it will appear lazy. I recommend not asking about hours directly.
To be honest, I and most of my classmates are pretty lifestyle conscious and none of us like being in the hospital all the time. All of us get frustrated by late admissions or crap that winds up keeping us in the hospital later than usual. We do have other things that we are trying to get home to. This is not about that. As I said, if you ask me to take you through a typical day/week, I find that perfectly normal and acceptable. It makes sense to understand what your life might be like.
The problem with asking explicitly about hours is that, to be perfectly honest, if you're someone who has rigid expectations about weekly hours, you're potentially the type of person who could be a pain in the ass to work with. I hate getting late admissions that keep me in the hospital when there's somebody on call who's there to do admissions anyway, but such is life. If I'm in the ED, I would try not to give someone in the classes under me a late admission but sometimes it won't be in my control. The question for me is the following: Are you going to be someone who's going to bitch and moan about it and/or do a half-assed job just to get home a bit earlier or are you going to graciously accept the cards you've been dealt that day, buck up and provide good care to the person coming to the floor?
I mean, I think life is pretty decent in most psych residencies so it seems a bit nit-picky to me. Like I said, I understand asking about lifestyle generally but I do have a negative impression of those asking directly about hours. You can argue with me about it, but that's my perception. The question of whether it's right or not is kind of irrelevant. There are residents out there who will perceive this question the way I do. It's up to the applicant to decide whether it's worth risking that to ask this question.
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I agree with others that there are indirect questions you can ask that essentially give you the information you need about hours.
I also agree with others that it's reasonable and expected for you to ask what the call set up is like. Some things to consider asking about are whether you take home call, how often, if there's a night float system vs taking turns on 28 hour shifts, how many hospitals you cover when on call (if the program has multiple places where you rotate), etc. If your specialty shares territory with other specialties, it may be worth asking how they share call. For example, face call is often shared by plastics, ENT, and OMFS, and programs may split it up differently. You could also ask if senior residents take primary call.
I also agree with others that it's reasonable and expected for you to ask what the call set up is like. Some things to consider asking about are whether you take home call, how often, if there's a night float system vs taking turns on 28 hour shifts, how many hospitals you cover when on call (if the program has multiple places where you rotate), etc. If your specialty shares territory with other specialties, it may be worth asking how they share call. For example, face call is often shared by plastics, ENT, and OMFS, and programs may split it up differently. You could also ask if senior residents take primary call.
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It depends on how the question is taken. Straight up asking "how many hours do you work a week?" may lead one to think an applicant is trying to find the chillest program so he/she can do the minimum amount of work and get by.
And having a co-resident for whom you have to pick up the slack sucks.
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I offer this information to applicants early on so they don’t have to guess if they are allowed to ask
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I understand what you're getting at, but you can ask those questions, even explicitly, with an appropriate tone that doesn't come across that way. I usually asked what time do the days typically start and what time are they usually done by. I actually have a problem with those who don't asking about hours and work times as it told me that they typically either weren't that interested, were trying too hard to be enthusiastic/sell themselves, or were just completely clueless about residency in general. They almost always come across as either disingenuous (even if they have good intentions) or oblivious. Neither of which I want to work with.
To the rigidity thing, I again understand what you're talking about, but again tone and vernacular matter. There are ways to sneak it into the conversation without blurting out "How many hours do you work!?!?" that are completely natural. Frankly, I think being able to carry an appropriate conversation and read others is important, especially for psych. I'm also not sure that the 65 hr/wk thing is as rare as you think. When I asked about hours and asked something like "so how often are you working 60+ hr weeks?" I got everything from "Lol, never" to "That's actually pretty typical." Obviously that'll change from year to year and I think call schedules played into that heavily for our field. I know it's not the norm, but I don't think it's as "rare" as people think it is.
And let's be real. We're in psych. We should be able to read when an applicant is asking that question because they're trying to do as little work as possible vs. just wanting to avoid a malignant program.
I agree that there can be ways of asking these questions that aren't as weird. I still maintain that asking directly is risky and would generally advise a more general approach.
Regarding the above, currently as a PGY-2 I'm probably averaging about 60 hrs/wk with a range from like 50-75. From my experience on the interview trail, I considered this more intense than average but right now I still feel like my life is pretty great. You're right that call significantly affects it, as the 75 hr weeks are generally those in which I have call on a Saturday. There's also a pretty big difference between 60 hrs/wk and 65-70 hrs/wk though and do think the latter are rare. The big difference is that since days on psych generally don't start at ungodly hours of the morning, unless you have a hellish call pool/schedule (which, to be fair can be a thing in our field but also notice that I've said that I think asking about call schedule is very reasonable), it would mean you're getting out of the hospital at like 7-8 PM every day. This is a huge quality of life difference for me because it's the difference between generally being able to eat dinner with your family/significant other vs scraping up something quick to eat alone quickly before going to bed.
The other reason I think knowing about call is reasonable/important is that, as much as call sucks, having higher average duty hours due to a ****ty call schedule is actually less onerous than just having long regular work hours. If you're on call a lot, it sucks because it trashes the evening you're on call or the day if it's a weekend, but it preserves the time structure of rest of your week. If you're simply staying late in the hospital all the time, that really sucks because all of your days suck pretty hard rather than just the ones where you're on call.
