Veterinary residency- work life balance?

[vulpus^2]

Dear SDN veterinary community. I’m a pre-vet student who will be attending vet school next year. Even though it’s bit early but I’m considering the option to pursue residency post graduation.
While I was able to look up a lot of advice on how to get into residency programs, I wasn’t able to find much on how is the residency experience.
I heard residents in my university struggle to maintain their work-life balance. I’m wondering what’s the personal experience of current and past residents. Do you think it’s possible to maintain a good quality of life during residency?

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[battie]

@SkiOtter @WildZoo @SportPonies I can never remember who the different residents/specialists are in this group any more. Could y'all tag some?

Not for nothing, two of my close friends are doing residencies (internal med and anatomic pathology) and they both work 60+ hours per week if you include call ins, records/paperwork, emails, etc in and out of the hospital. The internal med resident with absolutely say it's a million times better than her internship year. Part of it probably also comes down to which specialty you're going into as well. There are certain residencies that do and do not have on call. There are also the more pedantic residencies (welfare, teaching, etc) that are out in left field doing their own thing too.

 

[TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo]

I think that answer is going to be determined by several factors.

1. Which type of residency? An ECC or surgery residency is going to look VERY different from a residency in dermatology/radiology/pathology/etc.
2. What program? There are definitely large variations in QoL between different programs.

The ECC residents where I did my internship did not get any semblance of work-life balance. My current ECC program by comparison has at least a fair possibility of work-life balance (minimal on call by comparison, fewer scheduled hours), but by nature of the field and of residency itself it's always something you are going to need to work very hard to maintain. I've certainly been struggling with finding the time for adequate studying/resident rounds prep out of the hospital.

 

[JaynaAli]

As an intern in 2015-2016 I had zero work life balance. I’d work 60-80 hours a week depending on the service, sometimes (rarely) pushing 100 hours. It was almost always at least 12 hour workday, often closer to 15 before paperwork was done. The saving grace was that at my hospital we had two days off a week and we rounded patients off to other doctors, so our days off were true days off, there was no patient care. It let you catch up on sleep, get groceries, and maybe do something fun one day.

As a pathology resident in 2016-2019, work life balance was better but still not great. One of the downsides of residency is that there’s so much reading/self directed learning you have to do. For clin path at my school we worked about 45-60 hours per week depending on if you were on case reading/call that week or not, but I had to spend 1-3 hours per night prepping for rounds/journal club/lecture, writing papers, or just studying for boards/reading in general. There’s a lot of indirect self directed study in residency. Was there time to have a hobby or go out with friends? Yes but I still wouldn’t call it good work life balance for those years. Was it horrible? No. Was it good? Also no. But life after residency is MUCH better and it was absolutely worth the sacrifice for a few years until after boards when theres much better work life balance as a pathologist in diagnostics.

 

[allygator13]

I just finished my radiology residency in July and overall had a great work-life balance. This isn't necessarily the same at all radiology programs, we had a lot of residents at mine which made it easier. Basically the day was always 8 am - 5 pm, typically got to leave on time unless you wanted to stay late to finish cases (sometimes you had to because the day was too busy and things couldn't be left until the next day, or an ultrasound ran late), or if you were the person on call and ended up staying late for an after hours CT or ultrasound. Again because there were so many of us, we were only on call once every 3-4 weeks, and we would split weeks and weekends so you were either on call M-Th or Fri-M morning. Weekends on call were hit or miss, sometimes you were crazy busy, sometimes super slow, but again it only happened once every several weeks. Second year was the worst because that's when you are busy studying and preparing for the preliminary board exam, which took a lot of time after the work day and on the weekends reading and studying.

 

[VIN-Foundation]

A good place to start would be to look up the origins of the terms "resident" and "intern".

 

[battie]

VIN feeling spicy today 🤣🔥

 

[VIN-Foundation]

Hah. Not trying to be spicy. Just pointing out that if work:life balance is a priority, doing and internship and residency may not be the first choice. Of course it does vary quite a bit depending on the program and the speciality. I think once vulpus starts veterinary school and gets in the hospital they will have a better idea of what's involved regarding lifestyle for house officers.

I did a neurology/neurosurgery residency and loved it. It had a great work:life balance -- the life was neurology.

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[SportPonies]

@SkiOtter @WildZoo @SportPonies I can never remember who the different residents/specialists are in this group any more. Could y'all tag some?

Most of those who used to be active on here no longer are. Real life eats people.
I'm sure there's a new crop but they aren't WWers anymore.