Seeing family/vacations during residency

[premed4321]

I am wondering for people that are 3+ hours away from family during residency, how often can you manage seeing them? Do residents have protected time off

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[deleted480308]

I am wondering for people that are 3+ hours away from family during residency, how often can you manage seeing them? Do residents have protected time off

You’ll have a few vacation weeks in any specialty

The amount of time each week that you won’t be too tired for a 6hr round trip will vary drastically

 

[operaman]

All depends on the program. You’ll have some time though. If that’s really important to you then you should take that into account when choosing a program.

If I wanted to, I could manage a trip that far almost every weekend if I wanted (leave fri night and get back Sunday night). Other friends at other programs who don’t have golden weekends all the time would have a harder time with that. It might even be worth a slightly longer drive for a program with more golden weekends. All good things to tease out during the interview as people talk about call schedules. The ACGME only mandates one day off per week averaged over 4 weeks. Any program that is significantly cushier than that will probably brag about it. Then again some people describe our call schedule as needlessly brutal so sometimes it’s in the eye of the beholder.

Moral- do you due diligence in advance and many things can be possible.

 

[sloop]

My family lives about 4 hours away from where my residency is located. I get 4 weeks of vacation per year. I have never gone home other than during vacation time. The last two years my vacation time has been split—two weeks with family and 2 weeks for travel/spent at my apartment/studying for step 3/whatever.

I could go home more often as I’m in psych residency and, at least now in my PGY-2 year, I have most weekends off. I choose not to go home on weekends, though, because I just don’t really find it worth 8 hours of driving for a day and a half at home.

 

[SDunkey]

It should be no different than those who went to undergrad or medical school out-of-state, no? Especially those who took summer courses. Instead of winter and spring break, which typically ranges from 3-5 weeks total, you get 3-4 weeks of dedicated vacation time spread throughout the year.