What is your typical study volume/breakdown and shift length on call?
How many nights do you have during residency?
What happens if you skip conference?
How many moonlighting shifts can you typically get in a month?
Call structure:
R2s and R3s each do 2 weeks of junior night float a total of 4 times. It's a three night rotating system: night 1 you cover 5pm-7am (you cover the children's hospital + adult ER plain films after about 9pm); night 2 you cover adult ED and urgent inpatient body CT 7pm-8am ish; night 3 you're off. So for that 2 week block, which you generally do 4 times during residency, you're on either 10 or 9 nights. These shifts are busy with you reading XR, US, CT independently. Residents don't cover MR on call (neuro fellows cover neuro MR, body fellows and attendings cover body MRs which are infrequent overnight). This is where you learn to be a radiologist. Cover level 1 trauma on both adult and peds sides. Cover hyperacute stroke CTA with neuro fellow on call as your backup. Rarely an R4 has to do a block of junior night float. If they do they get compensated by less shifts in the senior call pool. I think the dedicated IR people get some junior night float in their R4 year as well since they're not in the senior call pool otherwise.
R2s have rotating weeknight ER plain film swing shifts from 5pm-9pm. They also cover some weekend shifts also doing ER plain films (Saturday 12pm-9pm, Sunday 8am-5pm, Sunday 5pm-8pm); there are generally like 17-19 residents per class who those shifts are spread out between. So during R2 you probably have about 14 weeknight shifts about 8-9 total weekend shifts.
R3s as a class cover only 2 shifts per week, an afternoon Saturday (noon-5pm) and Sunday pediatrics shift (8am-5pm). So like a total of 5-6 of those shifts per year. And you're not in the call pool during board prep time. So call as an R3 is very light. While on the topic of R3 and board review time, you basically get 2 months of "study time" in the form of your AIRP block (which you can either do at AIRP or stay in St Louis and do a 'radpath' block which is basically just study time or time off) and another rotation which is basically just study time. Not everybody gets these 2 blocks right before boards so those who don't complain. There is board review from 4pm-6pm like everyday for several weeks. You otherwise don't have protected time to study during the week, but you have weekends and evenings off during study time (no call). No one as far as I know has ever failed the core.
R4s have a rotating weeknight ER shifts which parallel the R2 shifts. Probably like 14-16 weeknight shifts and 8-10 weekend shifts. This call shift goes from 5pm-midnight, then you go to sleep and are backup, and you get the next day off.
All of this call is independent and you read out your cases face to face with the attendings the next morning.
R1s and sometimes upper levels do random Saturday morning shifts with attendings (not independent) which usually is like an 8am-noon shift on something like nucs, chest, GI, ultrasound, whatever. Body CT and neuro have some slightly longer shifts. IR call is completely separate and mostly covered by fellows but per month on IR you probably work about 1 weekend.
What happens if you skip conference?
There are morning conferences on most rotations. Those are small groups with attendings generally curating great teaching cases for you and a couple other residents. If you miss those or are late, that's a bad look, and attendings take it personally because they put in work to curate content for you and it sends them the message that you don't care about their time or your own education. And you really shouldn't want to miss those. They're amazing conferences.
You're not supposed to skip the general noon conference (but I never got in trouble for skipping)
Moonlighting?
I remember getting a shift per month or so. It was scanner baby sitting overnight where you slept at the hospital and accumulated dollars by being physically present in the hospital (or sat there during the day on a Saturday or Sunday). I never even had a contrast reaction in 2 years of covering that stuff. Since I graduated they added more and more sites for coverage. Being assigned to some sites which were like 20 minutes away from main campus meant they even let you out of service early on those days. Disgruntled posters talk about moonlighting as a hammer the PD uses to beat the freedom out of you. That's crazy. The PD does use the threat of taking away your moonlighting shifts if you fail to complete things you're supposed to be doing (turning in evaluations, doing quizzes and checkboxes for ACGME crap, stuff like that). The PD's job is often herding cats. Having such wonderful, lucrative moonlighting far outweighs the annoyance of being told to do something you were supposed to do anyway.
If you couldn't tell, I'm an MIR grad and I'd be happy to answer any questions via PM by anybody who has them.
I don't know who OP is but they've been on a mission to air their grievances and they've been doing it the past calendar year via numerous sockpuppet accounts here. It's getting kinda ridiculous. If I were a prospective resident I'd take all this with a huge grain of salt.
