How many hours do you need for sleeping? I need 5-6 hours a day to sleep. When I can't sleep at least 3-4 hours, on the next day I'm acting like a robot who doesn't think and feel anything and my calls are generally busy. If I can sleep for 4 hours on call , I am lucky . Unfotunately we aren't allowed to go home after the call , so I'am working for 36 hours like most of you.
Surgeons! How many hours do you sleep a day?
- Thread starter vselin
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I'm getting old - my goal is 6.5/night if possible. I can function on much less and this is what the training will do for you. But I dunno, I'm getting old. I see some of my attendings be up all night just cranking emergency cases then still operate the next day for their scheduled cases. They've also cancelled if they were too tired to continue safely. No sense in trying to be a hero either. Hang in there.
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Here's my breakdown. Some of this is tied to residency and fellowship experiences.
8+ - Please check my pulse to see if I'm still alive.
8 - WTF happened, why do I feel tired. Is my pager working?
7 - An ideal, but never fulfilled.
6 - Meh, ready to go and no coffee needed. Probably what I get anyways even when not on call since my kid wakes me up.
5 - I shouldn't have drank last night and/or I'm getting old and need to pee once a night.
4 - Ok, being on call sucks but I can power through the next day.
3 - I hope a case gets cancelled the next day. Threshold for coffee drinking.
2 - Need to steal the trauma or general surgeon's call room to nap.
1 - FML.
I agree with you-no sense in trying to be a hero. Do you wanna be operated by a sleepless surgeon, I do never.(except emergency cases)
I try to get 6 hours/night, but I believe it's not enough overall...it's just all I can squeeze into a day. Sleep interruptions are a big problem, but my children do more damage than my pager.
When you do have a relatively sleepless night, it's not usually the next day that is difficult...it's the day after that. Progressive fatigue and sleep debt are much bigger problems than acute issues from a long night.
Also, I can say with certainty that it is much harder to recover now than it was as a resident.
I'm not sure about the other SDNers, but I obsess over sleep...when to do it, how to do it, whether it's "quality sleep" or not, how my next-day tasks will be affected, etc.
When you do have a relatively sleepless night, it's not usually the next day that is difficult...it's the day after that. Progressive fatigue and sleep debt are much bigger problems than acute issues from a long night.
Also, I can say with certainty that it is much harder to recover now than it was as a resident.
I'm not sure about the other SDNers, but I obsess over sleep...when to do it, how to do it, whether it's "quality sleep" or not, how my next-day tasks will be affected, etc.
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For me it's more like:
8 hours: did I miss rounds? Is my pager broken?
6 hours: wow, did all my patients leave AMA or do my nurses love me?
5 hours: very nice
3-4 hours: meh. need coffee.
1-2 hours: wow, I'm just happy I got to take a nap
0 hours: I'M READY LET'S DO THIS
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I sleep between 5 and 6.5 hours; this was true before residency and after. I try to sleep more but can't.
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When I started residency, 4ish hours. Now as a PGY7, 6ish. I find that I don't recover the way that I used to, that is by far the most disheartening. I used to work 30+ hours, then go rock climbing, sleep 4-5 hours, and keep going doing whatever I was going to do the next day. Now I'm finding my post-30+ hour awake periods (far less frequent than they used to be) are followed by leisure days of writing/napping. There was also that Saturday a couple weeks ago when I slept 8 hours in a row. My wife thought I had died...
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I never recovered from residency. I sleep 5 hours at best before waking up and going “hmm maybe there is something I should be doing”
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I would say I average about 6 hours. I don’t get called in at night much. Between working out and trying to have a relationship with my husband, that’s about all I can get.
On the weekends, if I am off I can sleep a good 10-12 hours.
On the weekends, if I am off I can sleep a good 10-12 hours.
D
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Ditto. 4-5 hours is my norm these days. If I sleep anymore than that, I'm a basket case.
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I never sleep during the day, only at night. Maybe an occasional nap on the weekend.
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6.5-7 on non call nights. 4-5 on call nights, sometimes less, rarely more. 9 hours on weekend unless I am sleep deprived from the week, then can sleep 10+ without waking. I routinely got 7-8 hours all through medical school. I am less productive sleep deprived and prioritize sleep.
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8 or 9 hours on regular nights. Call nights it depends on how much bull**** and real **** I get but I try to go to bed early when I can so I might get 3 hours at a time broken up throughout the night. The day after a lot of night calls is typically busy but unless it is true emergencies I won't operate late so the following night I will try to get my 8 or 9 again and catch a nap in the days after if I get sleepy. I guess I am very similar to my avatar. Sleep is my favorite. That said in training and before that in the military I regularly made do with much less sleep and didn't use caffeine until my mid thirties. Now if I am just lose an hour or two I need caffeine to keep going. Getting older sucks.
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Depends on your ability to adapt and overcome. Was not uncommon for me to sleep 14 hrs on post call days.
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I don’t know how old you are, but sleep requirements seem to go down somewhat with age (or at least it did for me). In my early 20s I would feel pretty terrible on 4 hours of sleep, and now in my early 30s I sleep 4-5 hours most days and function just fine. I do get a solid 8-9 hours of sleep on my days off though.
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I usually try to get somewhere between 6 and 7 hours a night, if I can. If I'm taking 24 hour calls, I end up sleeping like 14 hours on my post call days, which I hate to do since I waste the whole day, but I just love sleep so much....
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This has not been my experience. I take so much longer to recover from lost sleep now than I did in college or even in residency.
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mmmcdowe
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You will weather through it. I also don't tell 100 rested on less but I did okay.
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I have plenty of time to sleep. I end up getting 6 hours on most days, 7 if I try. I usually wake up before my alarm goes off. During residency I slept 4-5 hours for years. This was VERY bad for me. After a few months I would start forgetting stuff and insidiously developed brain fog that was obvious to everyone but me.
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Maybe I’m just convincing myself I tolerate it better because I don’t have a choice...
your profile picture is very telling
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As a second year resident (worst call year) average 6-7 on non call days, 0-3 on call days (q5 home call, no post call day). Some of that was choice though, could have had 8 hours plenty of nights if I just went home, ate, and went to bed, but chose to unwind, go out, watch tv, etc. I personally got a lot more burned out by feeling I was only working and sleeping then by being a little more tired because I went out with my wife/friends.
As a new father: 3-4 hours. Anyone who tells you residency and call prepares you to have a colicky baby is lying. There is no non-call or post-call day. There is only the next day.
As a new father: 3-4 hours. Anyone who tells you residency and call prepares you to have a colicky baby is lying. There is no non-call or post-call day. There is only the next day.
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This is exactly how I feel. I’d much rather trade an hour or two of sleep if I can actually decompress and get to do something non work related.
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6-8. Less obviously on call if the pager is going off. Always can sleep in on Saturday
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Usually around 4-6 hours (but often broken sleep due to calls/pages).
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Holy ****. If I slept 10-12 hours I think I'd develop a decub
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I have developed, as an attending, some fairly troubling insomnia. I'd guess my average is like 5 hrs but the variance is wide around that, with it's of nights with 2-3 hrs, and occasional nights with close to 8. As a resident I never needed much, would usually get 4-5 and really never felt bad, could do all nighters and it was meh. Now an all nighter hurts more but I'd kill for a guaranteed 4-5 consecutive hrs.
Mostly its asleep around 10, if lucky wake up freaking out about some patient outcome at 3am. If unlucky it's at 1am.
Mostly its asleep around 10, if lucky wake up freaking out about some patient outcome at 3am. If unlucky it's at 1am.
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I have been doing this the past couple weeks and I really need to stop. Last night I was awake from 2AM to almost 5 stressing out about a case from last week. Clinic today was rough....
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One of my strengths throughout my entire life is the ability to worry about something for 5 seconds, think rationally about that thing, decide if it is the kind of thing that I can actually solve by worrying and contemplating it, and if not, immediately banishing it from my thoughts, no matter how bad it is.
This strength no longer exists since I've become an attending.
