Volume on weekend call days?

[Dark Sandbars]

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Another question for the SDN community. 🙂

I'm an MS3 at Dartmouth, and the residents here have q6, which makes for a very nice lifestyle, though the volume is often a bit light. Our call days on Saturdays in the spring often had only one pt come through the ED that required surgical care. This meant that the surgical residents were often able to spend their Saturday call days hanging out, relaxing, studying, etc. It basically turned Saturdays into personal days, and it meant that people could leave as soon as they rounded in the AM unless they were on call.

My sense is that this is not reflective of many other programs in the country, and I'm wondering if any of you might be able to comment about the average time that interns/residents could go home on the weekends?

 

[mddo2b]

Another question for the SDN community. 🙂

I'm an MS3 at Dartmouth, and the residents here have q6, which makes for a very nice lifestyle, though the volume is often a bit light. Our call days on Saturdays in the spring often had only one pt come through the ED that required surgical care. This meant that the surgical residents were often able to spend their Saturday call days hanging out, relaxing, studying, etc. It basically turned Saturdays into personal days, and it meant that people could leave as soon as they rounded in the AM unless they were on call.

My sense is that this is not reflective of many other programs in the country, and I'm wondering if any of you might be able to comment about the average time that interns/residents could go home on the weekends?

HEll no this is not the norm...is this a surgical residency or Club Med

 

[Bovie9]

well, as a medical student you are probably not really getting a good picture of what is really going on. On the average call for me, the med student is sitting around waiting for a trauma, while I am running around doing all of the work. Just because you get 1 admission, 3 times as many patients were probably "consulted" on, perhaps more on the floors. Not to mention the ICU, and routine scut work like checking labs, speaking with patient's family members, writing orders, checking abdominal exams, urine outputs, etc... A lot of med students at our hospital are lazy, disinterested, uninvolved despite our willingness to teach.

 

[fourthyear]

Are you kidding? Dartmouth must be the easiest surgery program in the country if there's only one surgical ER consult on a Saturday!

No, this is not typical. Usually those who are on call are working all day and night at most of the hospitals I've been to and there are anywhere from 3-20 new surgical consults or traumas per 24 hour call (probably 5-10 avg) at the academic medical centers I've been at as a student and resident. I do agree that students often have no idea of all the running around we do on call so there might be more work than you are seeing.

And Q 6 call is very cush too - most programs are closer to Q3 or Q4 on average. Currently I'm a 2nd year surgery resident and generally sleep about 2 hours avg on a call night if I'm lucky, and maybe very occasionally get some study time or relaxing time on call - if I get to the cafeteria for a meal during the hours it's open, it's an easy call day. We average about 2 calls per week throughout residency, and of course follow the 80 hour/leave early post-call/have 1 day off per week avg rules.

Most programs have in-house call for most residents, so you don't usually go home on call (at least if you have a trauma hospital there must be in-house residnets) If you're not on call on the weekends, yes, you go home right after rounds, but this could be later than you think depending on which staff round on the weekends and how long they like to make rounds with the team.

 

[Celiac Plexus]

Another question for the SDN community. 🙂

I'm an MS3 at Dartmouth, and the residents here have q6, which makes for a very nice lifestyle, though the volume is often a bit light. Our call days on Saturdays in the spring often had only one pt come through the ED that required surgical care. This meant that the surgical residents were often able to spend their Saturday call days hanging out, relaxing, studying, etc. It basically turned Saturdays into personal days, and it meant that people could leave as soon as they rounded in the AM unless they were on call.

My sense is that this is not reflective of many other programs in the country, and I'm wondering if any of you might be able to comment about the average time that interns/residents could go home on the weekends?

that's not the norm for my program. i just took call this w/e and was busy for 24 hours straight. we had about 12 traumas, and the senior resident went to the or for 2 cases. i logged a lot of scanner time. the dartmouth experience may sound nice to you, but i think the residents are getting cheated out of a trauma experience... as much i dislike getting the page "multi-vehicle accident, blunt stable x 5 incoming", i do think that a strong trauma component of a surgical residency is essential.