Do surgery residents really have every-other night call?

[Nanook]

I've been reading some of the typical books about how difficult residencies and internships are. In them, it mentions that although the authors had it tough in medicine with every 3rd night on call, the surgery residents were really insane b/c they had every other night.

That doesn't seem humanly possible--to only sleep every other night. Does anyone know how true it is, and if any universities/hospitals are trying to change this?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[RollTide]

My brother is a surgical resident and I promise you that it is not uncommmon for surgical residents to work 100+ hour weeks. No, they probably will not change this, and if they did they would extend the number of years to compensate for lost experience. My two cents.

 

[Floydman175]

There has been some amount of press on the topic of residents, especially surgical residents working such long hours. One article I read mentioned that air traffic controllers can't work more than 12 hours in a row because they will get to fatigued, yet residents will go 36 hours without sleep and still see patients. The problem with changing the policies like Rolltide said, is that if you shorten the time spent each week, you will need to lengthen the entire program. I guess the common idea as far as surgery goes, if you can't take 100 hours a week, then maybe you should try pediatrics instead

 

[Nanook]

Rolltide--

Does your brother have every other night call? Or every third night? I've heard that sometimes it can vary, depending on the program you are in. Out of curiosity, is he MD or DO?

 

[drusso]

Usually, surgery programs have q3 call (every third night). However it is possible that some programs might have a second or third person on call on alternating nights. However, I doubt that any program really makes all their resident take call every other night.

 

[guylon07]

I was an RN in a Burn Center, and we had general surgery residents coming through. This was a 3 month rotation for 3rd year residents, and it was terrrible for them. They were the only resident for the unit for that 3 months and they had 2 attendings over them. They were on call 24 hrs a day 7 days a week and had every other weekend off!!!!! It was verrrry hard on them, because the attendings were surgeons at other hospitals and were rarely there. So this 3rd year surgery resident would practically live there on that unit with no sleep for 3 months.

 

[Nanook]

Every night? Every single night!?!

Wow. I don't know how anyone could handle that. How long ago was that?

 

[guylon07]

That was just last year, and it was so hard on those residents. Not only hard on them but unsafe for the patients, becuase like I said the attendings were never around, and the unit was pretty much left to the resident. We would sometimes have admission 2-3 nights in a row, and they would have to be up there until whenever and then back to get things started by 6am. It was HELL on them. However, I think that this is a rather unusual situation, becuase of how crappy that med school was and they did not want to put the money out to pay another resident, because us nurses recommended it several times in meetings with the attendings. However the attending was head of the general surgery program, and he always said the school would not approve it. Oh well, if you want to know where this is just e-mail me. I don't want to broadcast it here. If you are thinking about surgery, you definitly don't want to do your residency at that place!!