Is Psych Residency Easier Than Medical School?

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confusedpremed12345

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Im a med student interested in Psychiatry. I am extremely stressed and burnt out and what's especially distressing is the fact that I know residency will be worse. However, I've heard that Psych residency is typically not terrible. Is residency in Psychiatry sometimes better than medical school?
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It depends on what you mean by worse. Psychiatry residency, at least after intern year, is all psychiatry so if you are very interested in that that will help. In terms of hours in the first year and potentially second year the hours are likely to be worse than the first or second year of medical school, but the PGY three and four year tend to be pretty good (closer to a normal job schedule).
 
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Bartelby said:
It depends on what you mean by worse. Psychiatry residency, at least after intern year, is all psychiatry so if you are very interested in that that will help. In terms of hours in the first year and potentially second year the hours are likely to be worse than the first or second year of medical school, but the PGY three and four year tend to be pretty good (closer to a normal job schedule).
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I guess I mean in terms of hours, overall stress levels, sense of purpose, etc. I'm an M2 in my last week of preclinicals before dedicated if that helps.
 
MS3/4 is a lot easier than the first two years for many people. If you learn best by doing and are energized by interacting with people, I suspect the end of med school will be more enjoyable than the first part. I have found residency to be easier than med school, in terms of hours, that I generally enjoy the work, and in the fact that I have an actual job to do (i.e. purpose).

Also, a lot of people are struggling right now due to COVID. The world in general ought to be a better place this year so I would try not to read too much into how you are feeling right now.
 
If you’re interested in psychiatry who cares how the residency is? Do what you enjoy period..it’s probably below average in terms of difficulty with wide variability between programs
 
robellis said:
If you’re interested in psychiatry who cares how the residency is? Do what you enjoy period..it’s probably below average in terms of difficulty with wide variability between programs
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Oh I still plan to do it. It's just that having hope that things will get better would help me feel less miserable in the present
 
Old&InTheWay said:
MS3/4 is a lot easier than the first two years for many people. If you learn best by doing and are energized by interacting with people, I suspect the end of med school will be more enjoyable than the first part. I have found residency to be easier than med school, in terms of hours, that I generally enjoy the work, and in the fact that I have an actual job to do (i.e. purpose).

Also, a lot of people are struggling right now due to COVID. The world in general ought to be a better place this year so I would try not to read too much into how you are feeling right now.
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Thank you, that's very reassuring to hear! Hopefully, this turns out to be the case for me.
 
confusedpremed12345 said:
I guess I mean in terms of hours, overall stress levels, sense of purpose, etc. I'm an M2 in my last week of preclinicals before dedicated if that helps.
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Psychiatry residencies have a huge variation hour wise. Some will push 70-80 hours the first 2 years. Others will never break 45.
 
confusedpremed12345 said:
I guess I mean in terms of hours, overall stress levels, sense of purpose, etc. I'm an M2 in my last week of preclinicals before dedicated if that helps.
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To be fair, you're probably in the worst part of med school. Things get a bit better, but 1st year of residency will be rough everywhere in regards to those things you listed. After that, there is a lot of variability for 2nd year (some programs are rough, some are chill), and typically much better stress and hours in 3rd and 4th years.
 
confusedpremed12345 said:
Im a med student interested in Psychiatry. I am extremely stressed and burnt out and what's especially distressing is the fact that I know residency will be worse. However, I've heard that Psych residency is typically not terrible. Is residency in Psychiatry sometimes better than medical school?
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God no, residency is much harder than medical school
 
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Just to be clear - most residencies are going to be tougher than med school. Sure you may find one that is a bit easier, but for the most part the difficulty will increase. Your interest in what you are doing should increase as well though, so this sort of balances out.

My best advice is to figure out how to have a good time in your life NOW. If you can figure out a way to have a good life, then when the workload increases you can probably adapt. Dont be the burnt out ms2 who is burnt out in ms3... just to get burned out again PGY1. At some point you need to figure out how to not be miserable, or it will haunt you your whole life. Ive seen burnt out folks in med school stay burnt out all the way through. Hell, Even before med school in the working world you see people burnt out from high school, throughout college, and then in all aspects of life. Kirkegaard would regard these people as living “in sickness unto death.” You know the type.

Figure out what are your “essentials” and never give those up. This is the most important lesson in med school.
 
mistafab said:
Just to be clear - most residencies are going to be tougher than med school. Sure you may find one that is a bit easier, but for the most part the difficulty will increase. Your interest in what you are doing should increase as well though, so this sort of balances out.
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I mean frankly this is not all true. You don't have tests in residency every 2 weeks. In fact I can't think of anything worse in my whole education than Med 2. It's by far the toughest year in the whole process, having to sit for hours in mind-numbing boring lectures only to come back home and drill thousands of factoids in your head without really understanding why they are necessarily useful.

OP hasn't even started doing clinical work. This is all very premature. Most people do not enjoy preclinical

Even when it comes to clinical work, residency feels more like a job. The stress is more in some cases (patient care), less in others (exams, matching...etc). The toughest part in residency are transitions in first and third year, but otherwise it's really fairly straightforward even relatively cush if you pick a decent place.
 
psychacad said:
I mean frankly this is not all true. You don't have tests in residency every 2 weeks. In fact I can't think of anything worse in my whole education than Med 2. It's by far the toughest year in the whole process, having to sit for hours in mind-numbing boring lectures only to come back home and drill thousands of factoids in your head without really understanding why they are necessarily useful.

OP hasn't even started doing clinical work. This is all very premature. Most people do not enjoy preclinical

Even when it comes to clinical work, residency feels more like a job. The stress is more in some cases (patient care), less in others (exams, matching...etc). The toughest part in residency are transitions in first and third year, but otherwise it's really fairly straightforward even relatively cush if you pick a decent place.
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I think it depends what you consider 'stressful' as an individual. Some people prefer activity to study, others the reverse.
OP, what is it that you are finding stressful about the preclinical years?
 
tr said:
I think it depends what you consider 'stressful' as an individual. Some people prefer activity to study, others the reverse.
OP, what is it that you are finding stressful about the preclinical years?
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Yeah exactly my point.
All in all, this experience is not all uncommon and quite frankly normal. If you love life in Med 2 you're either doing something very wrong (not studying and failing) or you're in a very small minority.

You won't know what it is to practice medicine until you start doing it in your clinical years. And same for psychiatry.
 
psychacad said:
Yeah exactly my point.
All in all, this experience is not all uncommon and quite frankly normal. If you love life in Med 2 you're either doing something very wrong (not studying and failing) or you're in a very small minority.

You won't know what it is to practice medicine until you start doing it in your clinical years. And same for psychiatry.
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M1 was worse than M2 for me, but that's just my school using first year to weed people out

I would say my particular residency is more stressful than medical school, but every program will be different
 
Difficult to compare - they are difficult in different ways. I preferred residency by orders of magnitude over medical school. I found memorizing minutia, constantly studying for tests, and feeling like my interactions with patients and others on the team were worth nothing soul crushing. The work in residency is tiring, the responsibility of actually taking care of patients can be heavy, and some of the emotional baggage of the work can be fatiguing. I much prefer the latter.
 
My experience and 2 cent. I would say 1st yr residency, then M3, then 2nd year of residency, probably 3rd year residency, 4th year residency, then M4. I don't count non-clinical years bc they are totally different and like school and not work.

Right now, I work more hrs per week than I did my last two years of residency. But, the pay makes up for it lol
 
confusedpremed12345 said:
Thank you this is quite helpful. I will make sure to do that when I'm applying.
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Univ of SC columbia. I chose a work horse program more so bc I wanted to learn how to handle anything and I am much faster and efficient due to necessity.
 
J ROD said:
Univ of SC columbia. I chose a work horse program more so bc I wanted to learn how to handle anything and I am much faster and efficient due to necessity.
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It’s pretty easy to be efficient though you don’t need to work really hard in residency in order to learn how to spend less time with patients
 
The 2nd year of my residency was pure hell and I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Significantly harder than medical school in every way imaginable. That said, 3rd year and 4th year are not so bad. At the end of the day if you enjoy Psychiatry its all pretty tolerable
 
For me, significantly easier, albeit not considering fourth year after sub-is. The anxiety of matching, doing well on step, the coming home from class all day to go through 100 slides of renal physiology, anki...so much anki, the rote memorization, the fact you knew 80% of this stuff you were never really going to use but had to do it anyways, the stress of always being the clueless new person on rotations...no comparison.

It probably helps I'm in a very supportive program with great life balance, but residency hasn't been nearly as hard as I prepped myself to expect, save for a couple medicine months during intern year (one of which was probably the worst month if my life from a work/stress standpoint).
 
Psychresy said:
For me, significantly easier, albeit not considering fourth year after sub-is. The anxiety of matching, doing well on step, the coming home from class all day to go through 100 slides of renal physiology, anki...so much anki, the rote memorization, the fact you knew 80% of this stuff you were never really going to use but had to do it anyways, the stress of always being the clueless new person on rotations...no comparison.

It probably helps I'm in a very supportive program with great life balance, but residency hasn't been nearly as hard as I prepped myself to expect, save for a couple medicine months during intern year (one of which was probably the worst month if my life from a work/stress standpoint).
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I agree, outside of the time on off-service medicine (I liked the neuro part), every part of residency was so much better than clinical years in med school. More responsibility = more meaning from the work, but I can see why other people would feel the opposite. Just being around academic psychiatrists all day made anything else better. I found it fulfilling to see people interested in teaching and helping others who appeared to be reasonably well rounded human beings as strong a light at the end of the tunnel as anything could be.
 
It's a "different kind of hard". Most weeks the hours are less, there's no brute memorization for testing, etc. But there is the constant stress of interpersonal relationships with your teams, your patients, and the system. You'll get to learn what is and is not tolerable for you, and hopefully get some good supervision to help you process it all as it's going on. In the end, if successful, you look back and say, "Hmm I guess I really did learn something", and you get to embark on the life journey of finding your best fit of life and career--for which psych allows you considerable flexibility and a wide range of options.
 
It sucks in a different way.

I was a psychology major in undergrad and always disliked 90% of the med school curriculum due to lack of interest (anatomy, organ phys, blah blah). For me med school just felt like a pointless drag where I was never going to use the majority of it again.

Residency and fellowship felt way more relevant to "what I signed up for" (outside of required medicine rotations but that's another story), but you're exposed to a lot of institutional/behind the scenes BS that med students are protected from. The patient interactions just feel more "raw" as you become the primary provider. Also as a med student you have very little real responsibilities, which is not true as a trainee. Also the hours (anywhere from 40-80 per week depending on your program) can wear you down over the course of years.
 
Just my two cents and personal experience, I hated medical school... I’m a PGY-1 now and I love life much more. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit older, I get paid (though not a great amount), but medical school was just a miserable experience, maybe my med school was just completely incompetent as most seem to be.

Residency is “hard” because you’re expected to be a physician and make clinical decisions and some weeks are completely awful like the months on medicine floors, but inpatient psych is fun and it’s what I like to do.

Overall though,

Residency >>>>>>>> med school
 
As long as you don't go to a sweatshop program, psych residencies tend to be much more chill especially the third and fourth years. Second year is still a bit easier than the hardest med school years.

Though I'm thankful to have gone through it, I hated med school. Intern year sucked when you were off service and if your program has night float that can be bad or maybe you'll be on call over the weekend.

However overall it gets much much better to the point where some of my coresidents are getting too laid back and not keeping up with self studying. If you're motivated to be a well educated psychiatrist, you'll find you have a lot more freedom, less obnoxious mandatory assignments and tests every week or two, and alot more energy and focus to do what you wanted to do, be a psychiatrist. It's up to you whether to use that freedom to be a good one.
 
Really interesting range of opinions here. I definitely have found that the hours are less and the work more rewarding in residency vs in medical school, and it feels more like a job and less like something that completely consumes your life. I'm also at a residency where the house staff are unionized and the hours reasonable, which likely plays a role.
I would agree with OPD that there's a different kind of fatigue/mental drain that comes from actually taking care of and being responsible for patients that you have to learn to deal with, and that you really can't simulate until you actually are writing orders and doing "doctor stuff."
 
confusedpremed12345 said:
Im a med student interested in Psychiatry. I am extremely stressed and burnt out and what's especially distressing is the fact that I know residency will be worse. However, I've heard that Psych residency is typically not terrible. Is residency in Psychiatry sometimes better than medical school?
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I would like to send you a DM, but your profile doesn't allow.
 
You're getting a lot of different answers because there are a lot of different residencies and medical schools. I think you can absolutely find a psych residency that will work you less in terms of hours than the average MS3/MS4 years. You can also find one that will be a lot rougher. I'm not sure if that's true for every specialty, so maybe that's what you're really asking about psych. What would help the most is you actually liking the work. That part plays into how "emotionally draining" the job is.
 
I'll give a little more in depth description of my experience (per usual):

Med school was at a DO school with no affiliated academic hospital that I felt lucky just to get into.
M1: Hard, but I mostly enjoyed this. I never studied after 7 pm unless there was a test in the next 2-3 days. We were on a systems based curriculum, so typically a test every 2-3 weeks. B-average student. Didn't really seem too terrible until May.
M2: The worst academic year ever. Studied 14+ hours almost every day. Still ended up remediating one class. Was miserable, clinically depressed. Scored far lower on Level 1 than expected. Subject grades in class were inverse to how I did on boards. I still don't understand this year.
M3: Glory, glory, hallelujah. Loved M3, felt like I was actually doing something with minimal actual responsibility. Got along really well with most of my attendings and got some really nice clinical evals. Felt like I was actually retaining knowledge instead of just cramming and regurgitating. Loved my psych rotations, even crappy rotations (peds) were mostly enjoyable and definitely endurable. Plus got to first assist some cool surgeries. Actually had a life on weekends again. 7/10, would do again.
M4: Mostly loved it. Had some fun psych electives, mostly enjoyed my interviews and got to travel a bit. Had some interesting electives towards the end of the year. Had a TON of time off. Enjoyed my 12 EM shifts and set my schedule to basically work 4/12 weeks in winter. Loving my match results also helped.

Overall enjoyed med school other than M2 which was awful. I actually had thoughts about whether I wanted to continue more than once that year and in retrospect am so thankful I did. Was all uphill afterward and I'd probably do (most of) it again. At this point you're basically just responsible for yourself and there's not really any risk to screwing up other than your own grades unless you're doing shady stuff.

Residency is at a mid(ish) tier academic program which was my top choice.
PGY-1: Started on medicine which was rough but also nice because the IM interns were just as clueless as I was. Also somewhat terrifying having actual responsibilities about other people's lives. I never thought I'd be anxious about prescribing PRN tylenol, but even that was initially stressful. Was a 6-day per week rotation, but overall enjoyed it and did pretty well. Had a kid at the end of that month and wife had complications, cue sleep deficit. Even with that, year wasn't bad overall. Had call ~2-3 weekend days per month. Sometimes less. No overnight call during the week. Averaged ~70hrs/week on medicine and 50/wk on psych and neuro which includes call hours. Imo having a baby was harder than intern year and our kid was literally the ideal baby in terms of sleep and mood.
PGY-2: Call was a bit rough. 1-2 weekend call shifts per month +2-4 overnight shifts per month. Probably averaged as total of 4 call shifts per month. Other than call I loved this year though. You actually (should) have a solid grasp on how to treat patients, get to actually focus on psych, and get exposure to a bunch of different areas. I learned a ton and has thus far been my favorite year (even with call).
PGY-3: Outpatient sucks. Inboxes are the devil. Can't wait for July. Although never having call after PGY-2 is a very nice perk.
PGY-4: Haven't done it yet, but pretty chill at our program. If you're a chief you basically run one of the inpatient teams for a few months and supervise other residents. Otherwise you do an extra month of consults and one month of junior attending. Plenty of electives. Can do research months which can be mostly from home. Plus no call. Very much looking forward to this year.

Overall first two years were solid. I clearly don't like outpatient, so take that with a grain of salt. Averaging ~50hrs/wk through the first 3 years, so much less of a time sink than med school. However, it does get a bit more emotionally draining at times especially since you're actually responsible for your patients.

I've enjoyed residency more than med school and I do think it's easier overall even with being a new father. I don't necessarily feel like I'm learning that much more than med school, but feel like what I'm learning is actually useful and thus feeling much more accomplished. I also am more of a kinesthetic/visual learner though, so residency aligns much more with my learning style as well. There's also just more time to pursue what you're actually interested in (both academically and outside of work) instead of worrying about padding a CV/application or passing tests.

TL: DR, I feel like residency has been better and easier than med school in almost every way.

confusedpremed12345 said:
Im a med student interested in Psychiatry. I am extremely stressed and burnt out and what's especially distressing is the fact that I know residency will be worse. However, I've heard that Psych residency is typically not terrible. Is residency in Psychiatry sometimes better than medical school?
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Chill, residency is better in so many ways for most people if you're in a field you like. Yes, it's a different kind of stress, but imo it's worth it and generally more manageable.
 
Psychic Meep said:
As long as you don't go to a sweatshop program, psych residencies tend to be much more chill especially the third and fourth years. Second year is still a bit easier than the hardest med school years.

Though I'm thankful to have gone through it, I hated med school. Intern year sucked when you were off service and if your program has night float that can be bad or maybe you'll be on call over the weekend.

However overall it gets much much better to the point where some of my coresidents are getting too laid back and not keeping up with self studying. If you're motivated to be a well educated psychiatrist, you'll find you have a lot more freedom, less obnoxious mandatory assignments and tests every week or two, and alot more energy and focus to do what you wanted to do, be a psychiatrist. It's up to you whether to use that freedom to be a good one.
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Second year was pretty rough at my program, six months of consults and ER. Third and fourth years are alright though.
 
Looking back, I would much rather do residency again than do medical school again (other than maybe M4). In residency you don't spend hours on end memorizing useless minutia you'll never use again. You don't wake up and spend every hour in the library or in class. 1st year you'll have 4 months of medicine that will suck, but suck much less than being treated like a poop stain during M3. At least people listen when you speak. And it's just 4 months, then it's over. The rest of psych residency was "easy" imo.

Inpatient: get to hospital at 7am, round around 9am, notes done by 1-2pm after an hour lunch with colleagues. If your program let's you leave after notes are done then yea, you're free after 2pm to do whatever you want. If your program makes you stay on campus for late admissions (which is the worst), then you find ways to bide your time until 5pm or whenever you can go home. I would commonly go to the gym, browse Reddit, make that patient-family phone call I was dreading, or read up on patients. Far from the horrors of M1-M2 grinding in the library for 5-8 hours a day. Weekend call is weekend call. Yea, it sucks working on the weekend but it's one weekend a month. You'll live.

Consults: Can be the worst rotation of residency in terms of hours. Usually a constant grind, but hospital and program dependent. One of my friends had an attending turn down every "just wants to talk to someone" or "diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer yesterday, now sad" consult. His consult rotation was "chill." My program had much more of a flimsy backbone so the residents had to go in person to see the patient and explain to the treating team the difference between psychiatry and psychology. Oh yea, and loads of fun treating "agitation" in delirium. Obviously I hated this rotation, but again, it's 2-3 months of residency. You can do anything for 2-3 months.

Outpatient: The good life. 8-5pm. Appointments are 30min to an hour for f/u, 1.5 hours per new intake (which is an eternity). Pretty easy to finish notes before you go home. No call on the weekend so all weekends off. This is as close to a "real job" as you've had since medical school started. I hated outpatient overall because the pace is so slow, but loved the lifestyle. Started moonlighting at the state hospital this year because I found outpatient so boring.

4th year: Lol. This felt pretty close to M4 for me. All weekends off. Pick and choose the elective rotations that you like the best in the beginning, then choose the easiest ones down the stretch when you need time off to interview at attending jobs and don't want to use vacation time. My program allowed us to take research months to write case reports. Best months of residency. Enjoy these months. Don't let people tell you any different. Your attending job will never allow them.

TL;DR Residency is much better than medical school, except maybe M4.
 
psych_0 said:
Looking back, I would much rather do residency again than do medical school again (other than maybe M4). In residency you don't spend hours on end memorizing useless minutia you'll never use again. You don't wake up and spend every hour in the library or in class. 1st year you'll have 4 months of medicine that will suck, but suck much less than being treated like a poop stain during M3. At least people listen when you speak. And it's just 4 months, then it's over. The rest of psych residency was "easy" imo.

Inpatient: get to hospital at 7am, round around 9am, notes done by 1-2pm after an hour lunch with colleagues. If your program let's you leave after notes are done then yea, you're free after 2pm to do whatever you want. If your program makes you stay on campus for late admissions (which is the worst), then you find ways to bide your time until 5pm or whenever you can go home. I would commonly go to the gym, browse Reddit, make that patient-family phone call I was dreading, or read up on patients. Far from the horrors of M1-M2 grinding in the library for 5-8 hours a day. Weekend call is weekend call. Yea, it sucks working on the weekend but it's one weekend a month. You'll live.

Consults: Can be the worst rotation of residency in terms of hours. Usually a constant grind, but hospital and program dependent. One of my friends had an attending turn down every "just wants to talk to someone" or "diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer yesterday, now sad" consult. His consult rotation was "chill." My program had much more of a flimsy backbone so the residents had to go in person to see the patient and explain to the treating team the difference between psychiatry and psychology. Oh yea, and loads of fun treating "agitation" in delirium. Obviously I hated this rotation, but again, it's 2-3 months of residency. You can do anything for 2-3 months.

Outpatient: The good life. 8-5pm. Appointments are 30min to an hour for f/u, 1.5 hours per new intake (which is an eternity). Pretty easy to finish notes before you go home. No call on the weekend so all weekends off. This is as close to a "real job" as you've had since medical school started. I hated outpatient overall because the pace is so slow, but loved the lifestyle. Started moonlighting at the state hospital this year because I found outpatient so boring.

4th year: Lol. This felt pretty close to M4 for me. All weekends off. Pick and choose the elective rotations that you like the best in the beginning, then choose the easiest ones down the stretch when you need time off to interview at attending jobs and don't want to use vacation time. My program allowed us to take research months to write case reports. Best months of residency. Enjoy these months. Don't let people tell you any different. Your attending job will never allow them.

TL;DR Residency is much better than medical school, except maybe M4.
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This is your residency experience, not everyone is so lucky
 
psych_0 said:
Inpatient: get to hospital at 7am, round around 9am, notes done by 1-2pm after an hour lunch with colleagues. If your program let's you leave after notes are done then yea, you're free after 2pm to do whatever you want. If your program makes you stay on campus for late admissions (which is the worst), then you find ways to bide your time until 5pm or whenever you can go home. I would commonly go to the gym, browse Reddit, make that patient-family phone call I was dreading, or read up on patients. Far from the horrors of M1-M2 grinding in the library for 5-8 hours a day. Weekend call is weekend call. Yea, it sucks working on the weekend but it's one weekend a month. You'll live.
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On rare occasions when my co-resident's schedule would line up, we would go over to the ping pong tables that were a few minute walk away. Felt on top of the world to get a chance to do that and talk **** in the middle of a day while getting paid. In retrospect, that was really being on top of the world.
 
Stagg737 said:
I'll give a little more in depth description of my experience (per usual):

Med school was at a DO school with no affiliated academic hospital that I felt lucky just to get into.
M1: Hard, but I mostly enjoyed this. I never studied after 7 pm unless there was a test in the next 2-3 days. We were on a systems based curriculum, so typically a test every 2-3 weeks. B-average student. Didn't really seem too terrible until May.
M2: The worst academic year ever. Studied 14+ hours almost every day. Still ended up remediating one class. Was miserable, clinically depressed. Scored far lower on Level 1 than expected. Subject grades in class were inverse to how I did on boards. I still don't understand this year.
M3: Glory, glory, hallelujah. Loved M3, felt like I was actually doing something with minimal actual responsibility. Got along really well with most of my attendings and got some really nice clinical evals. Felt like I was actually retaining knowledge instead of just cramming and regurgitating. Loved my psych rotations, even crappy rotations (peds) were mostly enjoyable and definitely endurable. Plus got to first assist some cool surgeries. Actually had a life on weekends again. 7/10, would do again.
M4: Mostly loved it. Had some fun psych electives, mostly enjoyed my interviews and got to travel a bit. Had some interesting electives towards the end of the year. Had a TON of time off. Enjoyed my 12 EM shifts and set my schedule to basically work 4/12 weeks in winter. Loving my match results also helped.

Overall enjoyed med school other than M2 which was awful. I actually had thoughts about whether I wanted to continue more than once that year and in retrospect am so thankful I did. Was all uphill afterward and I'd probably do (most of) it again. At this point you're basically just responsible for yourself and there's not really any risk to screwing up other than your own grades unless you're doing shady stuff.

Residency is at a mid(ish) tier academic program which was my top choice.
PGY-1: Started on medicine which was rough but also nice because the IM interns were just as clueless as I was. Also somewhat terrifying having actual responsibilities about other people's lives. I never thought I'd be anxious about prescribing PRN tylenol, but even that was initially stressful. Was a 6-day per week rotation, but overall enjoyed it and did pretty well. Had a kid at the end of that month and wife had complications, cue sleep deficit. Even with that, year wasn't bad overall. Had call ~2-3 weekend days per month. Sometimes less. No overnight call during the week. Averaged ~70hrs/week on medicine and 50/wk on psych and neuro which includes call hours. Imo having a baby was harder than intern year and our kid was literally the ideal baby in terms of sleep and mood.
PGY-2: Call was a bit rough. 1-2 weekend call shifts per month +2-4 overnight shifts per month. Probably averaged as total of 4 call shifts per month. Other than call I loved this year though. You actually (should) have a solid grasp on how to treat patients, get to actually focus on psych, and get exposure to a bunch of different areas. I learned a ton and has thus far been my favorite year (even with call).
PGY-3: Outpatient sucks. Inboxes are the devil. Can't wait for July. Although never having call after PGY-2 is a very nice perk.
PGY-4: Haven't done it yet, but pretty chill at our program. If you're a chief you basically run one of the inpatient teams for a few months and supervise other residents. Otherwise you do an extra month of consults and one month of junior attending. Plenty of electives. Can do research months which can be mostly from home. Plus no call. Very much looking forward to this year.

Overall first two years were solid. I clearly don't like outpatient, so take that with a grain of salt. Averaging ~50hrs/wk through the first 3 years, so much less of a time sink than med school. However, it does get a bit more emotionally draining at times especially since you're actually responsible for your patients.

I've enjoyed residency more than med school and I do think it's easier overall even with being a new father. I don't necessarily feel like I'm learning that much more than med school, but feel like what I'm learning is actually useful and thus feeling much more accomplished. I also am more of a kinesthetic/visual learner though, so residency aligns much more with my learning style as well. There's also just more time to pursue what you're actually interested in (both academically and outside of work) instead of worrying about padding a CV/application or passing tests.

TL: DR, I feel like residency has been better and easier than med school in almost every way.



Chill, residency is better in so many ways for most people if you're in a field you like. Yes, it's a different kind of stress, but imo it's worth it and generally more manageable.
Click to expand...
Overall first two years were solid. I clearly don't like outpatient, so take that with a grain of salt. Averaging ~50hrs/wk through the first 3 years, so much less of a time sink than med school. However, it does get a bit more emotionally draining at times especially since you're actually responsible for your patients.
Stagg737 said:
Averaging ~50hrs/wk through the first 3 years, so much less of a time sink than med school. However, it does get a bit more emotionally draining at times especially since you're actually responsible for your patients.
Click to expand...
Were you averaging >50 per week during first two years of med school or over all 4? Do you think if you went to a P/NP program and Step 1/Comlex 1 were Pass/No Pass, you would have studied less?
 
tinyhandsbob said:
Were you averaging >50 per week during first two years of med school or over all 4? Do you think if you went to a P/NP program and Step 1/Comlex 1 were Pass/No Pass, you would have studied less?
Click to expand...

First year was probably right around 45-50. Second year I struggled, so that was probably closer to 80-90 per week. Clinical rotations varies a ton. My core psych rotation was actually probably the most hours at 65-70 per week but I loved it. Most rotations were probably around 55-60 hours. 4th year varied a ton and I basically had 3 months off by setting my schedule up correctly.

A P/NP for first two years wouldn’t have mattered. I understudied first year and was constantly anxious about failing second year (major curriculum change implemented). So I doubt that would have been different. I needed to study as much as I did for boards, but I honestly may have studied less if it was P/NP, which could have been bad.
 
Third year of medical school remains the worst experience in my medical training, and I suspect it will get worse when Step 1 becomes P/F. Intern year is designed to be an awful experience, so no surprises there.

Personally, I prefer residency over medical school, but MS4 and MS1 were some of the most pleasant years in my training. I guess I just don't like medical school because of all the random information you are supposed to know to pass boards and shelves, and I'd say that continues into intern year with Step 3, and maybe the whole of residency if you choose Internal Medicine or General Surgery.
 
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