5 ms·

I'm currently in my 4th year of medical school, and I have to clarify your comment on the hours worked. We're held to the same hours limits as residents, which

by sxg 8y ago

I'm currently in my 4th year of medical school, and I have to clarify your comment on the hours worked. We're held to the same hours limits as residents, which is 80 hrs/week averaged over 4 weeks and an average of 1 day off per 7 days. We most often come near these hours on surgical specialty rotations (like the ones you noted). However, these are completely voluntary rotations. I'm not interested in surgery, and I have no surgery rotations scheduled at all during this year. Most of this year is actually spent on residency interviews. I've been traveling to different cities in the US about twice per week since October, and will continue through the end of January with breaks for the holidays. I have no hospital duties from September–January. The 3rd year of medical school is much tougher since we spend about 10 months of that year on rotations in the hospital. While some rotations are much lighter, others like surgery again get close to the hours limits. This is complicated by the shelf exams we take every 8–12 weeks. These require an additional ~2–3 hours/day of studying and most of a weekend day as well. Obviously, this study time is not counted towards the hours limits, but it definitely factors into fatigue and burn out.

jchanimal 8y ago
Where do we go to change that 80 to 32? This thread is making me feel unsafe.
- sxg 8y ago
  So the other side of this problem is resident education. The ACGME in conjunction with medical specialty boards govern the requirements for graduating from residency. There are hard requirements on how many and which kinds of procedures you need to do and patients you need to treat over the course of your residency. Residents meet those requirements with the current average 80 hrs/week and ~3–5 years of training. Moving from 80 to 32 hrs/week would likely require an expansion of training time to ~6–10 years, which residents would be absolutely against (I know I would be). I've been in school forgoing a "real job" with a salary for nearly a decade, and I'll be in my mid-30s before I become an independently practicing physician under the current system. Although the work hours are abhorrent, I don't want to add more years to my training in exchange for better hours.

by sxg 8y ago

jchanimal 8y ago

Where do we go to change that 80 to 32? This thread is making me feel unsafe.

sxg 8y ago
So the other side of this problem is resident education. The ACGME in conjunction with medical specialty boards govern the requirements for graduating from residency. There are hard requirements on how many and which kinds of procedures you need to do and patients you need to treat over the course of your residency. Residents meet those requirements with the current average 80 hrs/week and ~3–5 years of training. Moving from 80 to 32 hrs/week would likely require an expansion of training time to ~6–10 years, which residents would be absolutely against (I know I would be). I've been in school forgoing a "real job" with a salary for nearly a decade, and I'll be in my mid-30s before I become an independently practicing physician under the current system. Although the work hours are abhorrent, I don't want to add more years to my training in exchange for better hours.