swampthing said:
There's only a few specialties that allow for personal time, such as Radiology, Ophthalmology, Anesthesiology, and Derm (ie, "ROAD" to success).
Well, I wouldn't count on
any residency allowing alot of "personal time", whatever that is.
All residencies suck, granted radiology may suck less than some, but they
all suck.
As 1st-2nd year residents, we were on ovenight call every third night, and at that time meant being up all night dealing with ER cases and doing our own stat sono studies. San Diego had no overnight sono techs, so the residents did every exam after hours, including running the films through the darkroom. If you were lucky, you might be on a rotation where the senior resident would cut you some slack so you could leave the next day around noon. If you were solo, you were stuck.
As 2nd-3rd years, we still took overnight call every third night or so, but only covered in-house cases. That meant you might get 2 hours sleep between 3 and 5 am, if you were lucky, before you had to get ready for the 0730 staff readout.
We may have not spent the same hours at the hospital that the surgical residents did, but any "free time" was usually spent studying.
Realize that the written radiology board exams spend one entire exam afternoon on physics
alone the day before the all-day radiology exam.
While a bad day in radiology beat a good day in internal medicine every time, it was no cake-walk, believe me.
ExNavyRad