Weekends and residency call schedules?

[SEPsych]

So my significant other was asking me about this and I honestly wasnt sure. When your looking at a program and they say something like PGY1s on psych rotations take call q5, PGY2 q7 and PGY3 q15 (for example), what does this mean for weekends?

I know in IM many places there is no distinction between weekend/weekdays and you just get enough total days off to meet requirements, but this doesn't seem to be the case at my home psych program where weekends are covered completely differently.
For most inpatient psych rotations do you round every weekend day like IM, half the weekend days, only the ones that are your call days? Just trying to clarify, because it doesn't seem clear on a lot of programs websites where they just say "call every Xth day"

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[OldPsychDoc]

It's going to totally vary by program, and by site within that program. What programs report is often an approximation for a more complicated system, or it may well reflect a regimented rotation of some sort. No way to know until you've asked--usually on the interview.

 

[DJspreadsheet]

The short answer is weekends don't exist. Every day is fair game and as such, equally punished.

 

[Shikima]

Embrace the suck. It'll be over in just 4 short years.

 

[Merovinge]

Most programs I interviewed at (and my home program) have the default mode of M-F on inpatient psychiatry. We have 1 resident a week take a crummy Saturday day call in which they split the unit with the attending to get 6 days of required progress notes/week (along with cover consults/ED). Alternatively at least 1 place I interviewed at had folks always rounding Sat AM on their own pts so the on-call resident has an easier time. I greatly prefer a few crazy days to never having a golden weekend, but I am sure others would disagree.

Having said that, at least at my institution, interns realistically work 6 days a week with standard M-F and then 1 weekend call about 90% of weekends. Weekends really start to exist 2nd and 3rd year.

 

[SEPsych]

Thanks for the input, whats the best way to ask about this without coming across as lazy or too stupid to understand the website? Im not lazy at all, but would hate some resident to think I am based on a couple minutes of interaction which include me asking what the weekend schedule is like

 

[bashir]

I would recommend going to the resident dinner. You should have enough interaction with residents over the course of ~1.5 hours to ask questions like this without coming across poorly. In large part that's what these informal events are for.

That's not to say you don't want to make a good impression, but I think topics like this are totally in-bounds.

 

[peppy]

It is completely reasonable to ask the residents what call is like. I would ask them not only how often it happens, but also what are the expectations as far as what you do when you're on call, because that will vary too. Some places you might be responsible for all ER evaluations, admissions, and floor consults - while at other places you may only be responsible for one of those tasks on any given call day.

 

[hamstergang]

Agree that you are expected to ask about call.

Also, at my program the weekends are just covered by the 2nd residents as part of a 24 hour call (each resident gets about 17 weekend calls per year). The inpatients are seen by covering attending on the weekends.

 

[milesed]

Just remember that call intensity between programs is NOT always equal. At UL they stayed up all night in the ER seeing up to 20/night. At UK, they saw 1-2 and often had nights they were never called. You need somewhere between these extremes to learn something.

 

[Mass Effect]

The short answer is weekends don't exist. Every day is fair game and as such, equally punished.

This is all program dependent. At my program, weekends most certainly exist when you're on psych, even in intern year. When you're on IM, weekends don't exist, but on your psych rotations, you generally get most weekends off. You work one Saturday or one Sunday call per month. No weekday call. We have nightfloat. As an intern, you work two weeks of nightfloat with a senior. PGY 2 year, you do a month of nightfloat.

 

[milesed]

We rotated who came in to round on the psyc hospital's floors whether or not we had that day on call. If you were on that floor as a rotation, you split days with the other residents also on that floor for the rotation. But, if we stayed past noon, we got to take a day off later on. On call, was mainly for the VAMC and university hospital ER's admitting to you whe doing psyc. When on call for IM and Neuro, it was every 4th no matter what and everyone came in daily for their team rounds.