Looking to find programs that have solid training (top 20?) without killing myself in the process (i.e., few/none 24 hour calls). Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!
Having recently gone through the interview process, I’d say most well-regarded residencies will be close to the 80 hrs when you’re inpatient (I’m at a “cushier” top program and have worked ~75-78 hrs per week inpatient thus far).
The question then is how are those hrs distributed? For example, q4 24hrs gives you a post-call day so more hrs are squeezed into a shorter timeframe than say more of a night float system where you may have fewer days off but you work less hrs each day.
Because you’re going to work a lot of total hrs no matter what, I think you want to ask yourself is 1) how do you like your weekends, 2) how do you like your hr distributions, and 3) how do you like your outpatient? Programs will often either given you 1 golden, 2 silver, and 1 black weekend per month or 1 day off each weekend (with few golden weekends but also few black weekends). Similarly you can have 24 hr call or float systems. Finally, you can have x+y systems (predictable inpatient intervals) or systems with continuity clinics (less predictable but get a clinic half day each week or so, which you may or may not personally view as a bit of a reprieve). When interviewing, I think knowing which of those you’d prefer and prioritizing that schedule can be helpful (assuming all else is equal between programs), but also beware most residencies mix many of these different schedules depending on the service (I have some 24 hr calls and some nightfloat services in my program, for example).
There will always be some exceptions to this. Like I think Mayo was on a 4+4 system which makes them perhaps more chill (4 weeks inpatient on an admitting service, 4 more chill weeks of consults or outpatient), some program probably do just have less volume so no matter what schedule they have it’ll be more chill, and obviously there are primary care programs (often times more golden weekends but you need to enjoy outpatient care and usually have some gen med narrative to your application). But on the whole figuring out if you prefer call vs float, golden+black weekends vs many silver weekends, and if you want to prioritize an x+y schedule or not - is a great start.
This will be debated by people (and again is based on what I prioritized as far as weekends and call) but from what I recall, what immediately came to my mind as some of the more chill schedules among top program included:
Brigham
Stanford
BIDMC
Mayo
And what immediately came to my mind as some of the tougher schedules (again caveat based on my priorities) included:
Hopkins
MGH
Vandy
Uwash
UChicago
*Last but not least just want to say while I had preferences for schedules, I used them only once or twice in making my final rank list as a tiebreaker. So many more important things in my opinion - personalities, faculty you want to work with, ability to work with certain patient populations, city, etc. It ended up not affecting my list much and even in my “chill” program I feel I’m working hard. In fact, some of the most unhappy residents I’ve encountered are the ones who picked a residency program because they thought the schedule was going to be easier and are now realizing it’s all relative and they are still putting in a ton of hrs - the ones who went in with open eyes seem to cope a bit better.*