Being on Call

[Discovery01]

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I would appreciate some honest feedback from any of you wih some experience in the field of internal medicine. I am a little confused about teh whole "primary care has high calls" assumption. I hear/read that a lot. However, I'm confused. If you work in an outpatient clinic and you have 1:5 call schedule, waht does that mean? if you work in an outpatient clinic and don't have call, does that mean that you just see patients from 8-6 or wahtever your allotted time is and then go home? I'm a little confused about this whole concept of "being on call." Is it a rarity for internists to find jobs where they haev light call and are still paid $140K+ in suburbian/small city areas of the country? Thank you.

 

[iatrosB]

Is it a rarity for internists to find jobs where they haev light call and are still paid $140K+ in suburbian/small city areas of the country? Thank you.

No, not at all. This is more common now because of hospitalists.

 

[(Pants)^2]

see my "admissions per hour" post above. Being *on call* means admitting patients from the ED into the hospital
It sucks ass, generally👎

 

[angel80]

Are you talking about IM attendings? Generally, if you are an IM and have an outpatient practice, you have one of two options-either admit patients in the hospital yourself, or contract with a hospitalist group. In the first scenario, if you are "on call" it means that you are in charge of all of the admissions of any pt in your group practice (you or your partners). In the second scenario, you don't have to worry about admitting patients, but someone from the group must still be "on call" that day or night. What "on call" means in that situation is that you are handling all of the phone calls for the group. If a patient calls with an urgent question, you are responsible for speaking to and answering the question. Sometimes the ER will call you anyway, with a certain question about one of your patients, or to let you know about a patient and to ask you if you want that person admitted or not, even though a hospitalist will be the one actually admitting the patient.

 

[gwen]

yeah, even if you don't have a contract with a hospitalist group...they get something called a moonlighter. or the ER doctor does admission orders, it varies from hospital to hospital. an internist doesn't have to come into the hospital to do admissions...being on call as an outpatient physician just means that you have to talk to the ER doc about who is being admitted to you and get called from nurses about ridiculously annoying things. so being on call sucks a$$, but you don't have to come in...until the next morning to round.