How Close Should I live During Residency?

[HLxDrummer]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I am trying to help my fiancee figure out what to do with her career/life and I was wondering how close I need to live to the hospital if I was in an IM residency. She wants to work somewhere that would require us to live 30-40 minutes from the hospital. Would this not be compatible with an IM residency (being on call/etc)?

How far away could I live?

Thanks!

 

[Instatewaiter]

Yes it would.

 

[gutonc]

I am trying to help my fiancee figure out what to do with her career/life and I was wondering how close I need to live to the hospital if I was in an IM residency. She wants to work somewhere that would require us to live 30-40 minutes from the hospital. Would this not be compatible with an IM residency (being on call/etc)?

How far away could I live?

Thanks!

Um...can't she drive?

A 40 minute drive will add more than an hour to your already 12-16 hour day. How awesome does that sound?

One of my colleagues in residency was married to a resident at a program 2 1/2 hours away (he was military EM, very limited options). They lived about 1/3 of the way (she had the shorter, 45 minutes in perfect conditions, commute) but whenever either of them was on an inpatient rotation they each sublet a room in town (different towns of course) so they'd spent, at most, 3 or 4 days together each month, assuming their days off overlapped.

TL;DR...Do-able? Yes. Optimal (or even tolerable)? Not so much.

 

[HLxDrummer]

Well she has been driving three hours round trip 3-4 times/week to go there while I've been in Med school (she is going to take over a business). I thought we could live in the middle and it would be 45 mins for both of us. Also I could possibly get a residency at several hospitals within an hour from there so chances are lower that she will have to give up the business and move with me for residency.

Trust me though, that sounds ****ty. Right now I am a 15 min walk from the hospital so it will blow if I have to deal with long hours and a long drive.

Thanks for the input.

 

[jdh71]

At first glance I read this thread as: "How should I live in residency?"

I will be answering THAT question.

You should live: Like. A. Boss.

 

[LossForWords]

Nothing worse than leaving the hospital knowing you have to be back in 7 hours to pre-round, then having to subtract 1-1.5 hours off that time for the commute.

 

[Instatewaiter]

Nothing worse than leaving the hospital knowing you have to be back in 7 hours to pre-round, then having to subtract 1-1.5 hours off that time for the commute.

I can things that are worse. How about getting slowly gnawed to death by a toothless old man? That would be slow and sticky. Gross.

 

[deleted116380]

30-40 minutes is nothing. That's entirely possible for a lot of my co-interns that have to commute to one of our affiliated hospitals since a lot live within easy commuting to the main hospital. My commute as an intern is 1 hour each direction to each of our 3 hospitals. I'm not a coffee drinker either and I've had no problems for what has almost been 5 months now. Sure, it would be nice to have maybe an extra hour a day if I lived in the city to cut my commute in half, but I like where I live and enjoy my time off (5 weeks vacation as an intern + golden weekends at least once per wards block).

 

[1Cor1557]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html "The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting."

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/03/30/commuting/ As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert notes, “Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.”