Overnight shift: What specialties or kinds of doctors have the option of working overnight?

[Gauss44]

What kinds of doctors or specialties have the option of working overnight? Do you know of any that can permanently work the overnight shift, rather than rotating?

I personally prefer working overnight (as you can tell by the time stamps on my posts). I suspect to see answers like emergency medicine, ICU, sleep labs, etc. I wish I knew what the exact titles of the specialties are that often (or always) work overnight.

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[Chipster.]

What kinds of doctors or specialties have the option of working overnight? Do you know of any that can permanently work the overnight shift, rather than rotating?

I personally prefer working overnight (as you can tell by the time stamps on my posts). I suspect to see answers like emergency medicine, ICU, sleep labs, etc. I wish I knew what the exact titles of the specialties are that often (or always) work overnight.

I'd imagine you can do a night float for most IM subspecialties but someone might have to back me up on that.

 

[TheWeeIceMan]

You could find a nocturnist job as a hospitalist.

 

[link2swim06]

Your biggest options would be:

EM
ICU (Intensivist)
Internal Medicine working as a hospitalist

Also I'd imagine there are overnight gigs for radiologist and anesthesiologist (they also are in the hospital overnight).

Oddly enough I don't think the sleep medicine docs actually work at night. They just read the reports the next morning. The techs are the ones up overnight.

 

[organdonor]

I imagine most fields that deal with inpatients would be happy to have someone in the group taking all the night shifts. Probably ER, IM, pulmonary/critical care, radiology.

Least receptive would be office based like derm, family, cardiology (most IM fellowships for that matter), etc

I would think OB or surgery would require plenty of both night and days out of almost anybody in the field.

That said, you may think you do best at night right now. In your MS3 and MS4 you will be forced to do shifts during the day, evenings, even some overnight. You'll see that you'll survive them all. I'll come out of med school pretty open to time of day to work. I can sleep pretty much any time of day and/or night and as long as I can give myself 7 hours of sleep and an alarm I can adapt to damn near any schedule. I would argue that most graduating med students are the same.

 

[Catalystik]

What kinds of doctors or specialties have the option of working overnight? Do you know of any that can permanently work the overnight shift, rather than rotating?

OBGYNs can do shift work as hospital-only Laborists.
Neonatologists.
Pediatricians can also work as hospitalists.

 

[masaraksh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Doctors