How Many Hours Do You Work?

[BobA]

I'm a first year medical student considering psychiatry. I worked for two years as a residential advisor & recreational therapist for adults with mental illness (at Spring Lake Ranch - very cool place). I lived with clients, ate meals with them, worked with them on a farm during the day, met with the psychiatrist once a week - so I have an idea of what psych can be like in a nice setting.

I really want to lead a balanced, happy life. I think I can do that through school - but I'm not sure about residency.

How many hours do psych residents work?

Thanks!

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[Anasazi23]

It generally ranges depending on the program, and on the year you're in. Almost universally, the first year has the most hours, ranging from between 40 and 80 - again depending on the rotation (medicine vs. neuro vs. psych etc).

Generally speaking, the hours decrease as you move on from year to year. Often, call is eliminated completely by the fourth year, again depending on the program. Our fourth years averaged less than 40 hour weeks.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

I'm a first year medical student considering psychiatry. I worked for two years as a residential advisor & recreational therapist for adults with mental illness (at Spring Lake Ranch - very cool place). I lived with clients, ate meals with them, worked with them on a farm during the day, met with the psychiatrist once a week - so I have an idea of what psych can be like in a nice setting.

I really want to lead a balanced, happy life. I think I can do that through school - but I'm not sure about residency.

How many hours do psych residents work?

Thanks!

This early-career attending is working 50-55 hours a week, on call (home call and weekend rounding) 3 weeks annually.

 

[Anasazi23]

OldPsychDoc,

In your experience in job hunting as a psychiatrist, (and I know it varies by region and experience) how feasible is it to just not take call at all, or to have the options of being paid extra in taking calls. Maybe I'm just speaking from a 2nd year resident's standpoint now, but I'm already pretty sick of it. I can't imagine electing to do this at all in the future unless it's absolutely required in my place of work. Keep in mind I'm not so sure I want to do inpatient psych either.

Thanks!

 

[OldPsychDoc]

OldPsychDoc,

In your experience in job hunting as a psychiatrist, (and I know it varies by region and experience) how feasible is it to just not take call at all, or to have the options of being paid extra in taking calls. Maybe I'm just speaking from a 2nd year resident's standpoint now, but I'm already pretty sick of it. I can't imagine electing to do this at all in the future unless it's absolutely required in my place of work. Keep in mind I'm not so sure I want to do inpatient psych either.

Thanks!

I think such things do exist, but I didn't see many. Admittedly, my job search was not terribly extensive, but there's usually some aspect of covering phone calls at least. Call is less of an issue the farther away you get from inpatient
work, but someone's got to be covering if your patients have problems on nights and weekends.

You do need to hear this, though--call is totally different as an attending. It's home call (which is very light, as we have folks in house to do the heavy lifting) and weekend rounding. Three times a year--I can handle it! Inpatient work, too, is an entirely different animal as an attending. Much less scut, much better support. You're essentially overseeing and directing the enterprise.

 

[whopper]

I'm a resident in the Robert Wood Johnson program in Camden. (Not the New Brunswick program). Some of the residents are given the option to work at Atlantic City Medical Center.

Here our hours are about 50-60 a week. Not bad. While many psychiatric residencies in general are less hours than others such as IM and surgery, they can be tough depending on the program.

Psychiatrists from my own experience and I got 4 in the family, work less hours than other doctors. The emergencies are often in a manner where you don't have to worry every moment (E.g. in IM if your patient has a GI bleed, you got to be on top of it 24-7, checking the blood levels every few hours).

At ACMC, we do not have to pull all nighter calls. Unless there's an emergency, we work about 8-5 on regular days, our on calls end at 10pm. We are still responsible for emergencies & admissions during the night hours, but we can leave to our homes. When they call us during our call at night, we usually get about 4-7 hours of sleep.

We are on call Q5-6 per month. As a 2nd year you are on call even less. 3rd year, you are on call only 2x a month.

Sure beats having to pull an all nighter call Q3 as I've seen in some programs!

That being said, don't pick the profession simply because of the hours. Go into the field you want to do because you love it. Hours are a factor but not the only one. There are pros & cons with each field. Consider all of them in a balanced perspective.

 

[BobA]

Thanks for your info!