Housing

[drPLUM]

I know this was mentioned breifly in a thread below but I didn't want to hijack the thread...

Is there any limitation on how far from the hospital you can live and stilll have home call? For instance, if you live 1 hour away getting back for a late night frozen may be problematic. I have heard 20 min thrown around as a ballpark figure. I was wondering if any of you residents live 45min or more from the hospital and if it is a hassle on call.

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[deschutes]

Did you ask the residents at the places you're interested in about this?

I haven't done AP yet, but having gone on lunches with some of the other residents and applicants, this was a question that came up. Being that it's the Midwest with young kids and all, some of us do live pretty far out - I think someone was at least 45 minutes away.

I'm told that the thing about frozens is that in general they tend to be called in advance and therefore you'll be aware of them ahead of time. Plus there usually is some delay in the time it takes to get the specimen ready.

Don't know how much local practice influences this, so you'll probably want more opinions

 

[cytoborg]

Some of our residents do live 20-30 min from the hospital and one even lives 45 min-1 hr away (has kids & lives in the suburbs), but the vast majority I'd say live 10-15 minutes away in the same neighborhood and it does help. For me, I've been thankful on several occasions to be able to get to the hospital ASAP, or go home and come back easily. On frozens there is actually not usually much, or any, advance notice, at least so far in my humble experience...I mean yeah, you may know there something pending on the board but you don't know if it's going to go at midnight or 4 am. That's a big difference when you are deciding whether to just stay and wait, or go home and try to get some sleep. Just tonight I ended up getting called on a case that was not even on the board - first I even heard about it was them calling me. Anyway, I'm glad I live close. It has helped my quality of life a lot. Just this cog's $.02.

 

[AngryTesticle]

To echo cytoborg, it really is convenient to live close to the hospital. We usually get fair warning before the specimen comes out however there are serious deviations to the rule. Neurosurg cases fall on one side of the spectrum,..."There will be a specimen coming out within an hour." So you get in an hour after the page and WTF? No specimen! Then you sit around on your ass for a few more hours until the actual specimen comes out. Imagine if you drove in a whole hour to deal with this. I bet you'd be pissed. On the other end of the spectrum, there's the dingus surgeon who pages you when the specimen is about to come out. Of course, he KNOWS you're at home but that means that you need to get into the hospital PRONTO!

Living close to the hospital allows me the flexibility to drive in 5 minutes, park illegally, get my frozen sections done, and GTFO before getting a ticket.

 

[yaah]

We have a few residents who live 45-60 minutes away, which apparently has not been a huge problem. USUALLY when we get called in for a frozen we get some warning, but not always. Personally, I would not like living more than 20 minutes away. Of course, you can always just stay at the hospital the nights you are on call, most places will have call rooms for you to use even as a pathologist.