What residencies do not require call?

[premed101]

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After shadowing numerous doctors, I feel the big thing i'm not going to like is staying in the hospital all night long.
Do you know of any residencies with minimal or no call required?
Thanks everyone and looking forward to your responses.

Happy New Years!!!

 

[jonb12997]

hahahahahaha... oh... you're serious... um... hmmm... um... I'm at a lost... anyone else have any suggestions. possibly EM, but you're still going to have overnight shifts, but also cross covering over services during residency. Pathology possible? I've never looked into a path residency, so I have NO idea.

 

[Law2Doc]

After shadowing numerous doctors, I feel the big thing i'm not going to like is staying in the hospital all night long.
Do you know of any residencies with minimal or no call required?
Thanks everyone and looking forward to your responses.

Happy New Years!!!

All residencies will have some call. Some of the lifestyle fields may have less frequent call but to go that route, you generally need to do a prelim year in medicine which is going to have q3-q4 call. Call is a big component of your training in almost all medical fields, so if you consider that a deal breaker then it's time to change fields. Nobody likes staying in the hospital all night long, but guess what -- some of the better learning opportunities don't happen 9-5, you learn to make better decisions with more autonomy when you are there alone, and somebody has to be there and as a resident you are the low man on the totem pole in every specialty, so you take the call. Bear in mind that more and more specialties/hospitals are moving to a night float system, so it's possible that you will have to do many nights by the time you get to residency.

BTW, your third and fourth years of med school will also have a decent amount of call nights, so you may want to ready yourself mentally for this. By the time you hit residency, you will have a better sense of what is involved with being there overnight.

 

[jake2]

Derm and rad onc

 

[Law2Doc]

Derm and rad onc

Both of these require a preliminary year of medicine or surgery during which you will frequently be q3-q4. And thereafter both have call, albeit less frequently than some of the other specialties. So not really what the OP wants. Not to mention that these are tough to get.

 

[jake2]

Both of these require a preliminary year of medicine or surgery during which you will frequently be q3-q4. And thereafter both have call, albeit less frequently than some of the other specialties. So not really what the OP wants. Not to mention that these are tough to get.

Fair points. And I guess the occasional SJ syndrome or SVC compression comes in every now and them. I think these guys take call for like a week at a time from home though since not a lot goes on. Gotta match into them first as well.

Suddy buddy, ya ain't getting out of internship though.

 

[lord_jeebus]

Medical genetics?

 

[michaelrack]

After shadowing numerous doctors, I feel the big thing i'm not going to like is staying in the hospital all night long.
Do you know of any residencies with minimal or no call required?
Thanks everyone and looking forward to your responses.
!

There are some psychiatry programs in which you are not required to be in-house for call. You will still spend many hours at night in the hospital, but it usually won't be the whole night when you are on call.

 

[DonStracci]

One of my good friends is going into Path, partially because she abhors doing call. She also really likes path stuff but the call is a big part.

I know for certain that the path programs in my area do not do call in residency.

 

[Winged Scapula]

One of my good friends is going into Path, partially because she abhors doing call. She also really likes path stuff but the call is a big part.

I know for certain that the path programs in my area do not do call in residency.

Really? Then who is doing the frozen sections for cases that go on after 5 pm?

Who is doing the post-mortems and grossing of specimens over the weekend?

 

[earmuff]

Really? Then who is doing the frozen sections for cases that go on after 5 pm?

Who is doing the post-mortems and grossing of specimens over the weekend?

Exactly. The vast majority (approaching 100%) of path programs will require some form of call. Often this takes the form of beeper call from home, but you will need to go to the hospital on occasion (ie at 3am or something). You will stay late, work weekends, etc. There is no way to avoid call, but in path you are more likely to sleep in your own bed every night.

 

[earmuff]

Oh, and don't forget CP call (blood banking, micro, etc.)... This is probably the worst part of path calls...

 

[Long Dong]

At my program as a first year derm resident I have on average call every 3rd night for 4 months of call from home.

 

[DonStracci]

Really? Then who is doing the frozen sections for cases that go on after 5 pm?

Who is doing the post-mortems and grossing of specimens over the weekend?

She's not.???
Some days she stays til 6 🙂, but never a weekend. I haven't a clue who's doing the fun grossings on the weekends- good question.


EDIT: the answer is apparently "moonlighting attendings"? Hmmm.

 

[Winged Scapula]

She's not.???
Some days she stays til 6 🙂, but never a weekend. I haven't a clue who's doing the fun grossings on the weekends- good question.


EDIT: the answer is apparently "moonlighting attendings"? Hmmm.

That's odd that the hospital/program would pay someone an attending moonlighting salary when they could have residents and staff physicians doing the work. I'd say she's in a very unusual residency.

Our path residents are definitely on call after hours and weekends (and so were the residents during my residency and fellowship); I've seen them in the lab on a Saturday working when its been a particularly hectic or short holiday week (and surgeons are calling and bugging them about results 😉 ).

 

[HCE]

After shadowing numerous doctors, I feel the big thing i'm not going to like is staying in the hospital all night long.
Do you know of any residencies with minimal or no call required?
Thanks everyone and looking forward to your responses.

Happy New Years!!!

Public Health or Preventive Medicine? (question mark because they may require 1 prelim year...I'm too tired to look up programs in Frieda...)

 

[yaah]

Our path residents are definitely on call after hours and weekends (and so were the residents during my residency and fellowship); I've seen them in the lab on a Saturday working when its been a particularly hectic or short holiday week (and surgeons are calling and bugging them about results 😉 ).

Some programs do have fellows take most of the frozen section call. Some programs also have attendings taking blood bank call. I know of one program where call during residency is basically limited to autopsies on weekends and blood bank calls. But most are not like this. Our call requires us to stay about until 9pm which is when the ORs are done with most frozens. If there is a potential frozen, we stay later. Otherwise we can get called in overnight. In my 3 years of taking call I had to come in overnight about 10 times. If I was on call on saturday or sunday I almost always had to come in for a few hours to handle some issue or another. But most everything else was beeper call from home. Blood bank call ranged from 0 pages at night to 20 pages at night and no sleep. Usually it was around 5-10, clustered around the 6pm-10pm window, with another burst at around 11:30 when the nurses changed shifts.

But as I always tell people, if you are picking pathology (or any other field) primarily because of the call schedule or lifestyle you are probably going to be either a bad pathologist or unhappy in your career. DO NOT DO THIS. Lifestyle can be a consideration if you truly like multiple fields. But also bear in mind that residency only will make up about 10-15% of your career (for most people). The vast majority will be after residency. So choosing your field because of what the residency is like is extremely short sighted and a recipe for FAIL.

 

[elresidante]

After shadowing numerous doctors, I feel the big thing i'm not going to like is staying in the hospital all night long.
Do you know of any residencies with minimal or no call required?
Thanks everyone and looking forward to your responses.

Happy New Years!!!

I can't help but feeling this is somewhat of a silly question. You need to do call in order to be a good doctor. Sure, there are lots of specialties that will have minimal actual "call" when you're done with residency and an attending/physician, but while you are a resident, plan on being on call. If you want to make a lot of money and not be on call, go into investment banking or something. They don't have much malpractice insurance I imagine either.

 

[Doowai]

I have a classmate in PMR and essentially no all whatsoever after a horrible intern year. I mean he is working like 35-40 hours week. I did 3 psyche rotations in med school and call for the residents was VERY minimal at all - and often the residents were done around 3 PM.

Would you like the specialties that have minimal call? I would rather do a few years of overnight call than 20-40 years in a specialty I did not like. Many family medicine programs have minimal call -

 

[IndyXRT]

Fair points. And I guess the occasional SJ syndrome or SVC compression comes in every now and them. I think these guys take call for like a week at a time from home though since not a lot goes on. Gotta match into them first as well.

Suddy buddy, ya ain't getting out of internship though.

For rad onc, it's usually spinal cord compression that gets you out of bed. We take call a week at a time from home. Sometimes this involves coming in in the middle of the night, but generally not. As noted above, a preliminary year is required, which will involve varying amounts of call depending on where and what type of preliminary year you do (IM vs. surgery vs. transitional vs. something else).

Perhaps you could investigate residencies with night float for both interns and residents. Then, when you were in the hospital at night, at least you would be better rested and going home in the morning. Just a thought.

 

[beefballs]

path at the programs with my institution have home call, its q5 and avg coming in 2-3 per month