Your average work week would vary depending on the service you are on.
On easier rotations, I would round at 6:30-7am, be out at 5pm 3 days clinic, 2 days OR. These rotations are ~ 1/2 of our training.
Other rotations in at 6a out at 7-10pm, 1 day clinic 4 days OR. Close to 80 hour rule, rarely over - never more than 80 when averaged out over 4 weeks.
Call is Q6 for us, at home - usually go in 60-75% of the time. Last 2 years are backup call, have gone in 2 times in 6 months.
Residency programs vary widely in the amount of work you do - some are very light - <1 attending per resident. Some have close to 2 attendings per resident - this translates into more cases, but also more work and longer hours. Personally, I don't mind working an extra 10-15 hrs per week in residency - as a surgical trainee, what you learn in residency is key to what type of practice and the type of cases you can do once you get out. Although nearly all programs train you well to be a good surgeon, I would argue that if you are interested in more advanced cases in practice, you really need to go to a heavy surgical program. If you know you only want to do tubes, tonsils, septums, sinus and a few other smaller cases, it wouldn't hurt to go to a lighter place. If you change your mind in residency, you can fill in the gaps with a fellowship.
I've said before, the key things to look at in a residency program are ears and facial plastics. You'll get all the H&N you will want in most programs. In peds, most ENTs would only do smaller cases - tubes, tonsils, thyroglossal duct cysts, LN biopsies, etc. Airway cases and the more complex stuff really belong at a childrens hospital with a good PICU and pediatric trained anethesiologists - I do not believe it is standard of care for these types of cases to be performed in the community. Nearly all (if not all) childrens hospitals will require a peds fellowship for privileges these days. In ears, you want to have good training with chronic ears - implants are cool, but are time intensive post implant and are a money loser for a practice - hence they are sent to academic places. Unless you're doing tons of stapes in training and continue this in practice, the medical-legal climate has really given these cases to the Neurotologist. Same in facial plastics - you'll get all the trauma you need in training, but others such as rhinoplasty, blephs, rhytidectomy, etc are often weak in many programs.
Interestingly, I feel most 4th year med students look at places based on name (see otomatch.com). This is crazy IMHO. As a surgeon, you need to look at the breadth, volume and autonomy when selecting a training program, not at the NIH research rankings. If you want to do academics (which <15% of graduates eventually do pursue), you can go into this from ANY residency program. Nearly every department is recruiting. Research is nice, but a residency is to train a surgeon, not train a post-doc. I have yet to hear a patient ask how many papers an attending has published - However, I have heard them ask how many cases they have performed of a particular operation.
Leforte
