can Moonlighting affect your fellowship performance?

[tartesos]

Im talking about once or twice a month, on saturday or a friday night.
ive heard many points, and im about to do it, but i dont know how will it affect me in the long run...
a former fellow took a less paying job( 100/hr instead of 120- 130) because he could sleep 5 hours a night or so, and he said after a while, even then it got to him.
i must balance my budget with at least once a month shift, so i guess i have no choice!

has anybody gone through this before?

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[gutonc]

I didn't moonlight much during my first year of fellowship...once or twice a month as you suggest and not every month. It was occasionally painful but overall it was fine. Since we don't take in-house call in my program (and call is distributed all years of the fellowship so it's never that frequent anyway), it was infinitely less painful (and more remunerative) than taking Q3 overnight ICU call as a resident was.

Now that I'm a research fellow, I moonlight 3-4x/month without any significant impact on my performance. I do an in-house gig that allows me to spend time in the lab when I'm not busy on the floor and I usually get 2-5 hours of sleep a night (part of this is because the nurses know and like me and batch their non-urgent pages to happen once or twice a shift).

I briefly pursued a higher paying moonlighting job at a different hospital in town. But after my 2nd shift in a row of admitting 12 patients in 12 hours, I bailed. I'll take the $10-20/hr pay cut and sleep for some of it, thank you very much.

 

[tartesos]

I didn't moonlight much during my first year of fellowship...once or twice a month as you suggest and not every month. It was occasionally painful but overall it was fine. Since we don't take in-house call in my program (and call is distributed all years of the fellowship so it's never that frequent anyway), it was infinitely less painful (and more remunerative) than taking Q3 overnight ICU call as a resident was.

Now that I'm a research fellow, I moonlight 3-4x/month without any significant impact on my performance. I do an in-house gig that allows me to spend time in the lab when I'm not busy on the floor and I usually get 2-5 hours of sleep a night (part of this is because the nurses know and like me and batch their non-urgent pages to happen once or twice a shift).

I briefly pursued a higher paying moonlighting job at a different hospital in town. But after my 2nd shift in a row of admitting 12 patients in 12 hours, I bailed. I'll take the $10-20/hr pay cut and sleep for some of it, thank you very much.

Thanks for the input, i`m also taking a pay cut to work at the former fellow place that is a little laid back. i don't need that headache now, specially still adapting to my place.
i guess this will have to be a wait to be seen situation, i have no choice.

 

[carrigallen]

Yeah the key to moonlighting is low-impact. Pick something where your responsibilities are limited and narrowly defined, something that is shift-work.