How far can residents live from the hospital they match at?

[Futuredoc1364]

Hi everyone, I did a search for this but did not find the exact answer to my question. I just wanted to ask how far (in terms of distance) are residents allowed to live from the hospital they match at? Does it depend on the program? For some reason I think I heard 15 miles at least at my own program but I am not sure if this is a "universal" thing for all programs in the country.

Thank you for your feedback! 🙂

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[gutonc]

Hi everyone, I did a search for this but did not find the exact answer to my question. I just wanted to ask how far (in terms of distance) are residents allowed to live from the hospital they match at? Does it depend on the program? For some reason I think I heard 15 miles at least at my own program but I am not sure if this is a "universal" thing for all programs in the country.

Thank you for your feedback! 🙂

It will depend on the program. For programs with home call, they will generally require you to be able to get into the hospital in X minutes or less (usually 30) which would limit the distance you can live.

My IM program had no home call but did have a Jeopardy/coverage system and if you were first call you had to be able to get into the hospital in 1 hour. The vast majority of people in my program lived a 20 minute (non-rush hour) drive or less from the hospital but a few lived further. One on a farm about 10 miles out of town (but still easily commutable) and another lived ~1 hour away but rented a room near the hospital on her ward/ICU rotations.

 

[Law2Doc]

Hi everyone, I did a search for this but did not find the exact answer to my question. I just wanted to ask how far (in terms of distance) are residents allowed to live from the hospital they match at? Does it depend on the program? For some reason I think I heard 15 miles at least at my own program but I am not sure if this is a "universal" thing for all programs in the country.

Thank you for your feedback! 🙂

Agree with gutonc. Most programs make you stay within the building for call, so how long you commute is your own business. Honestly, if you are pushing the 80 hour/week average limit, you aren't going to want to add another dozen hours of commuting on top of that each week, although I've known some folks who have. At the end of a long overnight shift, you are probably going to want to drive the shortest distance you can to avoid a traffic accident, and then collapse into bed. The program only has to give you 8-10 hours between shifts under the new rules, so if you have, say, an hour commute each way, that ends up being 6-8 hours at home each night/day before you have to be back on the road. If you have home call (meaning you can take the pager and go home, not the norm in most specialties but not unheard of), you probably have to stay within a certain distance because if you have to run in for a sick patient, nobody is going to want to hear "I'll be there in an hour". So they may require you to stay in the hospital and basically convert your home call to an in-house call.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Ours required no more than 15 minutes from hospital (this was mostly so if there was an emergency, the Chief residents could get there swiftly). This was true for attendings as well if they took trauma call.

 

[45408]

Depends on your specialty...I take home call and cover two hospitals while on call. In the winter, one of the hospitals is over an hour away and I haven't run into any problems. Just depends on the specialty and your departments policies.

Serious question: what is a rad-onc emergency?

 

[gutonc]

1. Spinal cord compression- non-surgical candidate (comorbidities, multi-level disease, extensive systemic disease burden) with actively progressing neuro findings.

2. SVC Syndrome not amenable to a stent or not chemo sensitive that has not developed collaterals that may be having airway issues.

3. Referring physician not sure of what do for "Cancer patient" and places a stat consult

4. Someone looking for the interventional radiologist

The order of frequency...well Ill leave it at institution dependent.

4=3 (only when they're spamming every pager with "oncology" in the name...I've gotten paged by people who also paged Gyn Onc, Rad Onc and Surg Onc at the same time just to see who would call back first...it's always me) >>>>>>>2=1.

The difference is that, lots of Rad Oncs aren't primary in the hospital. So while there are certainly Rad Onc emergencies, there's already somebody in the hospital taking care of the patient at the moment. Plus, while you may get there in 15 minutes and decide in the next 15 that the patient needs immediate therapy, it will still take an hour or more to mobilize the tech and physicist and make a treatment plan...assuming appropriate imaging has been done already.

That said, our Rad Oncs are great about coming in after hours/weekends to zap what needs urgent zapping. I get more push back from the in-house surgery teams than the Rad Onc resident sitting at home.

 

[45408]

That said, our Rad Oncs are great about coming in after hours/weekends to zap what needs urgent zapping. I get more push back from the in-house surgery teams than the Rad Onc resident sitting at home.

The surgery residents in-house probably have a lot of other things going on simultaneously, that's why...

 

[Impromptu]

30 minutes at my institution. I assume this means with good traffic.

 

[Buzz Me]

Most consults here have to be seen within 30 minutes (if you're taking home call). This is unless you're already in-house and otherwise busy with some other sick patient, obviously.