Originally posted by Gator05
HiFi,
THanks for your reply! A question for you; what are your thoughts about call schedules? I've seen in-house anywhere from q4-q15 as an attending, or home once a week. Also, how widespread are job opportunities?
sorry for the delay in my reply.
go to neonatology.net and you can see a small sample of job postings.
the job market is HUGE in academic medicine ( lower paying ) and pretty good in private practice.
call schedules are highly variable.
In an academic center, when you are the attending on service that month, expect to be on call Q3-5 (from home usually ) but expect to come in when there are new fellows, or for very bad patients, like those going on ECMO. Also expect to work 1-3 weekends per month.
in short, your month on service is long.
Depending on your academis job ( research or clinical track ) expect anywhere from 2-10 months a year on clinical service.
Those docs that do primarily research spend a lot of time in their lab, and you are expected to have a good grant or other source of funding by your 3-5th year as jr faculty. To me this seemed like a much more stressful job because producing quality research and securing funding takes an awful lot of work and talent ( crap research abounds...but that's another story ! )
Private practice is VERY variable.
My job involves me doing a solid week on service with 24 hr shift on Fri and Sat. I do this week every 4-5 weeks. The rest of time I cover night call ( all in house ) in our NICU 5Pm-8AM, and there are about 4-5 of these per month...and THAT's ALL. you do the math. I work about 12 days a month, and since our call is IN HOUSE and one of us is always here, when I am off, I am off.
My friend works for PEDIATRIX medical group ( the nations largest private neonatal practice ) and she works pretty hard, covering a vaariety of hospitals from Home, and also doing 4-6 nights a month in their level 3, in addition do daily rounding respinsibility at the level 3 ( on her own patients )
Basically, you have a different lifestyle in neonatology. To me it's like a residency that never ends ( only that it pays a Hell of a lot more ) in that you spend all of your time in the hospital, and when there is nothing going on, you watch TV or hand with the nurses ( or take home call depending on your practice )
you do procedures, and hone skills that amaze your fellow physicians. people can't believe I can put a 24 guage peripheral a-line into the post tib artery of a 500 gram patient with almost no blood pressure, or do a PICC line in an old cardiac patient with no access. Procedures are a big part of your job, so you do need to enjoy them.
I couldn't do the whole shirt and tie office thing seeing diaper rash all day, or adult medicine looking at obese chain smokers that want a pill to fix their hypertension.
I prefer high intensity, high reward medicine where most of your patients get well, and you are an expert at a type of medicine that scares the living daylights out of the rest of the physicians in the hospital
best of luck. don't base the decision to or not to do neonatology on your first NICU rotation as an intern, because it is quite overwhelming. I hated it and used to throw up almost every morning when I smelled the scrub sinks because I was so terrified of my patients
