I'm speaking from a pretty limited experience but I one thing you need to remember is that your residency and life as an attending is probably more hellish in ortho than uro. At the place I work the following is what happens, this is based on my observations of ortho while on the trauma service, and while on urology service.
Ortho:
- Attending always needs to come in for something when on call, not uncommonly has to be up at night
- Resident getting constant calls the entire shift, mainly from ER
- Resident has to attend the majority of traumas since more often than not they require an ortho consult
- Ortho is on every other day for spine service as well, and gets lots of consults from trauma for this (other than that I don't know what duties the spine service has)
- Many ward calls related to pain issues
- Patients on the ward a long time, slow recoveries
- Residents put patients through lots of pain in the ER
Uro
- Of about 12 call shifts, attending had to come in 2 times total. Both occasions for a case lasting < 1 hr, neither at night
- Home call for entire residency, covering two hospitals
- About 6/7 pages can be handled over the phone
- The majority of consults can be treated by ER staff easily and faxed to attending for outpatient consult.
- Have to go into hospital after midnight maybe once every 3-4 shifts on call
- 90% of ER consults requiring actually seeing the patient can be dealt with by junior resident without needing to bother attending at night
- Resident does have to jab a needle into someone's erect penis once in awhile
Plastics is worse than both IMO as a residency.
