It's highly variable between specialties as well as between programs. But for the most part fellows' schedules are nothing like those of medicine residents. For one, we have a LOT more home call and pretty much no in-house call. Also, our hours that we are working during the day tend to be a lot longer.
Since there is so much variability among programs, I can't really give you anything in generalizations, other than in general fellows are almost never required to take in-house overnight call. To give you some idea of a fellow's schedule, here is my usual routine as a pulm/cc fellow:
Work M-F 7am till around 8-ish (sometimes later, sometimes earlier)
Work on average 1 out of every 3 weekends. Those weekends basically mean that I'm on home call from Friday 5pm until Monday 8am. I come in to round and see consults on Sat and Sun, and finish whenever I finish (sometimes that means I'm done at 2pm, sometimes 11pm).
Take home-call during the week M-Th either on a q2 schedule or every night, depending on the rotation.
So on average over a period of a month this type of schedule comes out to be around 70-80 hours per week. Unfortunately the home call stuff doesn't count towards our work hours - you have to be physically present in the hospital for it to count - so we probably end up working more than this.
In my program, we rarely have to come into the hospital when we're on call -- most problems can be handled over the phone, and the residents are quite self-sufficient in the ICUs here. I think I've come in a total of 3 times this entire year. But still, getting the 3am phone calls night after night can really wear you down. Just to note, my schedule is very different than GI and cards -- there are a lot more emergencies in those specialties that require the fellow to come to the hospital in the middle of the night. So at least out of the programs I know, the fellows in GI and cards take less frequent call, but they are a lot busier when on call and get a lot less sleep.
