We have a night float system here, and are on a 13 blocks (as opposed to monthly). The fifth years take one block of in house night float along with a junior resident but otherwise work literally no weekends and no nights. For the rest of the year, night float is covered by a 3rd or 4th year as senior who staffs with the attending and weekend days and nights are covered by 3rd and 4th years reporting directly to the attending. It is like this for every rotation.
I think what happened is, we had fewer residents until our cohort expanded this year, and the fifth years would work nights and weekends just like fourth and third years. But this is the first year we have more residents after the ACGME approved increase in our compliment and now the fifth years are not needed to establish minimal coverage. The fifth years have been incredibly lazy this year, not even covering weekends when someone is out sick or someone has a fellowship interview or something like that.
Also, at one of our two clinical sites, chiefs are not allowed to board or start cases without an attending present. Additionally, we have a tradition of anyone staffing consults with the attendings; they do not really care if it is an intern or a chief resident.
I'm a fourth year about to be fifth next year, and while the prospect of working a five day work week sounds nice, it just does not seem right, both in terms of my learning, the knowledge I would like to give to junior residents, and experience in the OR.
I'm thinking maybe the solution is to have a chief resident on home call a week at a time and consults are staffed with him or her? Is that how most places do it? I'm pretty sure our attendings would enjoy not being woken up at night. The 3rd and 4th year residents, however, would probably miss scrubbing cases that come in overnight, however. Some of my best experiences were as a 3rd year covering night call and scrubbing with the attending.