ophthamology residency hours

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Just wondering, how bad are the hours for ophthamology? Is it as brutal as general surgery residency? How many hours a day or week do you guys put in?
Also, this is a bit off topic, but is Doheney extremely hard to get into for residency?
thanks

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Just wondering, how bad are the hours for ophthamology? Is it as brutal as general surgery residency? How many hours a day or week do you guys put in?
Also, this is a bit off topic, but is Doheney extremely hard to get into for residency?
thanks

Depends, but not bad overall I'd say. No. Depends on your year and program, but maybe around 55-65 hrs/week with call? Yes.
 
Doheny (note spelling) 1st year schedule:

in at 700 AM, out by 600PM. This includes a 1 hour AM lecture on most days. so if you do the math, that averages out to about 55-60 hours per week. we take in-house call, so if you throw 1 weekend call into the mix, it puts you close to 80. don't get me wrong the first year of ophthalmology residency can be intense and if you asked me 2-3 weeks ago, i might have even used the word "brutal" as i was preparing for the OKAPs (the national in-service exam), but i think our lifestyle is better than our general surgery colleagues. by second year there is no more overnight or weekend call.

Doheny, like any other top 10 program is competitive and matches its top applicants.
 
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1st year of residency for ophthalmology is generally busy for most of the good programs because most likely you will be taking primary call for the public hospitals and you will be seeing patients in clinic while your senior residents are in the OR.

At the busiest, including lectures, would probably be 60-65 hours/week. It gets better when you become a senior resident, because most likely you will just be taking backup call.
 
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1st year of residency for ophthalmology is generally busy for most of the good programs because most likely you will be taking primary call for the public hospitals and you will be seeing patients in clinic while your senior residents are in the OR.

At the busiest, including lectures, would probably be 60-65 hours/week. It gets better when you become a senior resident, because most likely you will just be taking backup call.

Most weeks are around 60-70 hrs/week. At my program, there is one week a month where we go over 80 hrs because of the way we do our call schedule, with in house call.
 
Most weeks are around 60-70 hrs/week. At my program, there is one week a month where we go over 80 hrs because of the way we do our call schedule, with in house call.

What prog. is this (if you don't mind sharing)?
 
70 to 80+ hrs for PGY2
55-65 hrs for PGY3
about 50 hrs for PGY4

Not too bad.
 
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Do you guys think that PGY-2 is much busier than an Internal Medicine Internship? I'm about to finish my medicine year, at a busy hospital in AZ. i hope next year I get more time to read.
 
in some ways yes, in some ways no. when i was in your shoes, i used to think "how could it possibly get any busier?" i went from a middle-of-the-road internship to one of the busier ophthalmology residencies. although there is less running around the hospital trying to get studies done and writing admission orders, ophthalmology clinic can be very busy. you throw consult, 1st call (in-house or home), preparing for conferences and reading for OKAPs into the equation, 1st year of ophthalmology can be extremely busy. i love ophthalmology and think my program is fantastic, but don't kid yourself; PGY-2 is a busy year at most programs. the light at the end of the tunnel is that PGY-3 (2nd year of ophtho) is usually considerably less demanding in terms of call/consults at most programs.

Do you guys think that PGY-2 is much busier than an Internal Medicine Internship? I'm about to finish my medicine year, at a busy hospital in AZ. i hope next year I get more time to read.
 
My internship fell under "cush" category; I did like 40 call nights during my PGY-1. I ended up doing around 130 call nights as a PGY-2 :) . So, yeah, I agree with what Ruben said.
 
I think every resident in our program would say that their PGY2 year was hands down busier than their PGY1 year, whether it was Internal Medicine or Transitional.


I would agree with the above that PGY3 and PGY4, the hours are better. We only go over the 80 hr/week as PGY2s.

The only other exception to that is our retina fellows who work far more than 80 hrs/week.
 
My internship program is very busy during the wards months (6), I did 1 months of ICU(also busy).but the rest is electives (easy schedule). I'm going to UPMC (I CANT WAIT to finish medicine).
 
Even if your PGY-2 is not any less demanding than PGY-1, at least the time spent will be more enjoyable. So long as ophthalmology is what you truly enjoy.
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