Who is working these 80-100 hrs/week?

My sister is finishing her OB/GYN residency and she has worked many 80-100 hour weeks and a couple of 120 hour weeks. Other than OB/GYN, general surgery, neurosurgery, and possibly ortho, I don't think many specialties have those kind of hours regularly. However, the medicine and peds residents that I worked with did work up to 100 hours / week when on ward months. Usually around 80-90. The interns have these hours for 9 months, 2nd year residents 6 months, and 3rd year 4 months. So its not all the time but they DO have these hours for part of the year.

I think that med and peds schedules are more dependent on the program than in OB and surgery, so there are many easier programs out there.

 

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by droliver:
<strong>How much of that 120 hrs in a week was sleeping at night while her students wrote notes on her l&D patients Q2 hours(sorry- having horrible L&D flashbacks there). </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">We weren't allowed to even do that at the hospital that I (unfortunately) had to my OB rotation at.

Essentially, call was sitting/sleeping in front of the L&D board until you were called to retract for that crash C-section.

Thanks to the L&D nurses, patients were often reminded of their OPTION to have a medical student around. As predicted, more often than not they opted NOT to have us near them.

Hmm... Didn't seem to be a problem when a resident demanded that someone had to be there to retract legs when those post-delivery vaginal tears needed to be repaired.

Whoa! Too many bad clerkship memories...

Back to the topic at hand, most of the residents that I met, outside of the general surgical residents, usually worked 60-80 hour weeks.

 

I'd say that very few specialties or programs work these types of hours. Maybe surgery interns or residents on a trauma/sicu service, but few others. From what I've seen, for some reason people like to exagerate about how many hours they work. Most residents, on most rotations work far less that 80 hours per week. For internal medicine, I'd say that very few programs even approach 80 hours per week. If they do, it is probably only ICU rotations for 3-4 months out of three years. From what I've seen, most radiology residents and ER residents work 40-50 hours per week.

 

part of the problem here is that a lot of hospitals mask the number of hours their residents work so you cant get an accurate picture.

there should be some sort of mandated, standardized reporting scheme that requires all hospitals to clock their residents in and out and report their numbers.

then perhaps we can get a better idea and maybe find out that its not as bad as we thought. But this 'veil of mystery' that hospitals like to have around work hours NEEDS TO GO. Its time for upright honesty and full disclosure. I think our patients deserve at least that much.

 

Dr Oliver said:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Seriously, I just don't believe the #'s people put out there for a lot of these things. I think your perspective will change after you finish medical school & hit the trenches. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I believe the numbers. Further, one doesn't have to complete medical school to appreciate the rigors and time demands of residency. As 3rd year students, many of us worked along side the resident including night call. Certainly as subinterns this was the case.

 

I keep a fairly regular tab of the hours I work as a surgery intern at UIowa:

VA General Surgery, q3 in house call: about 90 hours/week, one weekend off/mo
Vascular Surgery, q2 home call: about 70 hrs/wk, two weekends off/mo
Trauma surg, q3 in house call: app. 90 hrs/wk, one weekend off/mo
CT surg (what I am on now), q3 in house: about 100 hours/week.

I do other months on Urology (q5 home call, 3 weekends off/mo!!), pedi surg (q2 home call, 2 wkend off/mo, home by 4-5 pm often), and G-surg (q6! in house call, 2 wkends off/mo).

Oh, and by the way, I don't consider my job hard work. I love this stuff. Seriously, I can't imagine getting paid three times what I am being paid now to do something like be an accountant or a lawyer or an investor. I am living the life I want to live, have incredible job security, have an AMAZING financial future, and get free health care (good for those with families).

 

Remind me to keep a log of my radiology residency hours. Now that would make for some interesting conversation. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

 

Hah Q7 no way. And, no 80 to 100 hour weeks either.

Avg about 50 hours a week on easy rotaions and 70ish on tougher ones. And, on surg path I have to work half days every 3rd Sat.

 

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Voxel:
<strong>Remind me to keep a log of my radiology residency hours. Now that would make for some interesting conversation. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Would you say that Rads residencies are the cushiest of all? Possibly tied for that honor with Path or Psych? What do you think?

 

I think path residencies overall are the cushiest (plus they don't have to do a clinical internship year). Radiology is still pretty light when compared to most other specialties, but has seen an increase in hours over the past 10 years. More and more CTs and MRIs are being done with no increase in residents. Also, many of the smaller rads programs have q4 call for at least the first two years of residency because they have less residents in the call pool (watch out for places that have 2 residents on call per night, this cuts the pool in half). Also, I've heard radiology call can be one of the busiest and most stressful call nights because many clinical decision will be made on your call with no attending back-up. Even with all that, its much nicer than most other specialties.

 

I've been overnight call at a busy academic medical center with 2 radiology residents on call one junior and one senior and it was still hell trying to finish all the studies by the morning. They got no sleep all night but granted they were on night float, so that made their lives a little easier. All types of surgical residents breathing down their necks to make quick decisions so they could operate or dump to medicine. And don't get me started on ER requests for film interpretation. They are never happy no matter how fast you do things.

Radiology call is pretty brutal compared to pathology or psychiatry. I cannot imagine being up for 24+ hours alone doing all that was required of them. It'll be me in a few. LOL. I'll be sure to log my hours (on call and how much sleep I could get) and let you guys know. The only saving grace is that at my program we are out post call by 10ish in the morning. And call is like q6, q8, q10, q12 (years 1-4).

 

Hey Voxel, &gt; or = to q6 call doesn't sound too bad. If I understood correctly, even if you are up and busy all night, you do get to go home by 10am the next day and it's [at it's most frequent] q6? Is that right? What about a typical non-call day... what's that look like? I would kill to be in your and WCB's shoes right now... congrats.

 

Typical non-call days from what I have seen at my school depends on the rotation. Everyone starts at 7:30 with conference until 8:30. Neuro MR and Body CT are pretty busy with occasional quiet times and stay until 6-7pm most of the time. Neuro CT, chest, bone, abdominal (GI/GU) are usually lighter and out of there by 5pm. Interventional usually anywhere from 5-8pm depending on the caseload. The interventional day has some down time between cases.

These are just what I saw at school. My residency and other residencies are probably gonna have some variability. Good luck Dr_Cuts!

 

Yea, Pathology is definetly sweet. At MCV we certainly have the best hours. I am sure it may vary some from place to place.

The neurosurgery folks seem to have it the worst here. The chief told us he averaged 115 hours a week. No thank you.

 

My program is pretty good...70-80 hrs per week (avg one call per week), with a fair amount of down time during the day (depending on the rotation), but the calls are pretty tough. I rarely get to sleep more than 2-3 hrs. and often get no sleep. Next year things will get much better...50-60 hrs per week with home call.

I think most of the 100-120 hr weeks come from interns, surgical specialties and the more malignant medicine programs. For example, I know of one east coast medicine program that is nothing short of a slave labor camp! The residents routinely work 120 hr weeks, with NO down time. A typical "lunch hour" is 5 min. spent inhaling a sandwich, and they rarely get more than a nap during calls. When one person complained to the PD about the hours, they were told, "Well, you know you really don't HAVE to work that many hours, but I can certainly see how it happens. You're such a good doctor...people like you always end up spending extra time with patients and going the extra mile...GOOD JOB."!!!!! Now is that smooth or what! All but 2 of the 45 interns and residents are FMGs...not surprising. That's how they get away with it! The program knows that these residents have no where else to go.