Call as a Psychiatrist

[zac16125]

I was hoping the attending psychiatrists out there can give me some insight on what their call schedule is like. I'm curious as to the call life of both inpatient and outpatient/private practice psychiatrists. I think most people, myself included, see psychiatrist as being less slaves to their pager than other physicians. Is that accurate? Are there outpatient psychiatrists out there that don't even take call? Those that do, how frequent of an occurence is it? Of course I understand that there are pysch emergencies but I can't imagine them being as frequent as say, a patient having chest pain requiring a trip to the ER and being admitted.

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[kcrd]

I take very infrequent call as an outpatient psychiatrist - about one or 2 nights each month I am available by phone for the resident who staffs one of our hospitals overnight. They call for discharges from the psychiatric emergency service, emergency consults or any other questions. I am not required to go in to the hospital those nights. 3 or 4 times each year, I cover consults on the weekend, and will go into the hospital for a few hours each weekend day. If one of my patients calls the psychiatric emergency service asking for me, the service does call me directly on a non-call night. This is rare, though. Where I trained the attendings had a similar call arrangement, but instead of covering 1 or 2 nights a month, they would cover an entire week every few months.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

4 weeks a year.
M-F it's a rare phone call to approve an admit coming from an outside hospital or give direction to a triage nurse.
Sat-Sun it's staffing admits that our residents have done overnight, dealing with any close obs orders, other odds and ends on the units.
No overnights. Plus get a little extra in the check those months.

We also have a separate rotating system for M-F business hours, so once a month on average I'm on tap to deal with internal calls from other (non psych) docs with med questions, referral issues, etc.

 

[zac16125]

Thank you both for your responses. Any input from others, maybe some who aren't involved with residency programs?