On call schedule

[monalisa83]

Hello all, I am an MSIII who has been doing research with my Ophtho program however after shadowing my family ophthalmologist in clinic I feel a bit discouraged. She was discussing with me her schedule. Shes is a solo practitioner. Her schedule consists of going to her clinic till about 6 or 7 pm then when she is on call going to the hospital and staying until 12 midnight or later. When I asked her about what she enjoys the most about her career choice she told me she enjoyed clinic the most because she is so scared of operating for fears of getting sewed. She told me that if she gets sewed then there is no point in continuing practicing because she doesnt make enough anyway. My questions are:
1.) Are 6 weeks required to be on call for ophthalmologists?
2.) Is the schedule really this chaotic?

My fear is that I would like to have time for a family, and although I really find ophthalmology to be interesting, hearing her schedule I am afraid that I wont have time for this. Thanks in advance.

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[eyerish]

I think there are number of things to think about here:

1. where will you be practicing?
2. do you have a fear of lawsuits
3. your individual variations in practice style

Depending on where you practice, who you practice with, how many folks agree to share call in your area for a given hospital, etc. can dictate how much/how little call you have. So a given person's call schedule is unique to all of those factors above.

Practicing under a constant fear of lawsuit can be hard / discouraging but also must be tempered with reality. Only you can decide how you are going to feel when you are practicing. I can tell you that if you are scared of lawsuits to the point of debilitation, almost no area of medicine is going to make you feel "safe". If you are worried, though, I would review the facts about how many lawsuits are brought, how many are successful (few), and how much you need to worry. Talk to your hospital's legal department as well, they tend to be well grounded and have experience with the environment in your area.

How late people stay at their office to finish clinic can be a good thing; if you are seeing 50 patients a day, more power to you. Efficiency in practice is something that you develop over time, as well as how you like to run your practice. Some people leave their practice open longer to help patients get in after their work hours (evening clinic). Some people choose to work 4 days a week, but do huge, long clinics in those days, and sometimes people like to spend more individual time talking to patients and that keeps them longer. Some patients love this sort of attention and don't mind waiting, others will go to the guy up the street who is more "on time" but may spend less time with them. The best is probably a balance between the two (IMHO).

So, I would recommend you "shadow" a number of folks, and make an assessment of the area in which you live and/or intend to practice. This is a good model for every area of medicine you might want to pursue, because you can find similar patterns in any specialty.

 

[rubensan]

perhaps you should shadow a busy refractive surgeon for a very different perspective.

 

[7ontheline]

The person you're following doesn't sound typical - most ophthalmologists I know enjoy surgery. Panic about the possibility of being sued sounds really lame to me, personally.

Also, a solo practitioner is going to have a much busier call schedule than someone in a group usually. They are also probably going to be busier a lot of the time because they're on their own.