Favorite Call Schedule

[DrWahoo]

So what is your favorite call schedule (ie. Q3 ,night float, floors) ?

[alison]

I secretly wish that dh had gone into emergency medicine because I LOVED those rotations! 12, 10-hour shifts!! He was home more than I was!

[ellie]

Seems like an oxymoron...

ETA: sorry it that sounded a little snarky...I'm feeling a little bitter about the call schedule of a pediatric surgery fellow today...

[DCJenn]

There isn't one that particularly sticks out. I do have to say that given the choice of him not-sleeping, fuming, waiting for the pager to go off all night at home OR having him go to the hospital and inflict his pain on innocent nurses, I'll sacrifice him to the nursing staff.

Apparently the way call is going to work form here on out until eternity is one month on, two months off. I don't know if this is better or worse than the other option of every three weeks.

It all pretty much sucks.

Jenn

We have home call, and we'll get a spurt of days where he gets paged a lot, and then weeks where there's nothing. I usually don't even know when he's on call vs. not 'cause he carries his pager all the time.

You can all throw things at the Pathology bitch now. :!

That said - intern year we experienced Q2 -- which was sheer hell, and Q3 was the best we ever got. Q4 was unheard of in general surgery.

[Vanquisher]

As I have never experienced different types of call and only shitty junior surgery call, I would have to purely guess what I thought would be the best type of call for me:

NONE!!


Oh, wait, that doesn't really answer your question. Well, if I had to put an order to it, I would say - this is just for me, mind you:

1. No call.
2. Sporadic home call (real home call, not the fake shit we have, where they say you can go home, but that's only if NOTHING happens, which never happens).
3. Night float. My dh doesn't require a lot of sleep, and this would allow the kids and I to see him a lot more.
4. Q high number ranging down the scale to...
5. Q low number.

And, that's just the way I see it.

What Jenn said. Ok.....I'm ducking now. Start throwing the tomatoes.

[Vishenka69]

His program has short calls, which basically means they work really late (9-11pm) but no overnight. This way I can do my own thing but don't have to sleep alone.

[alison]

You reminded me of something, Vishenka. And this might be useful for those whose spouses are thinking of anesthesia. When dh is in the OR, weekends and holidays are completely off (at least for this year)! It's the right balance of time together and time apart. When he's on call, he's got late call as well - which could mean coming home at 5 or 6pm already, or 11-midnight, depending on how backed up the OR is. They also have the "10-hour rule," meaning, if you leave at midnight, you don't go in until 10am the next day, and you're first on the list to go home (which is oftentimes 1-2pm!).

[DrWahoo]

So far (this is aour first year of residency) the schedule has been okay. He started off with Night float which wasn't bad, becaus eh got weekends off, and really doesn't require alot of sleep. Now he is doing q3 which isn't so bas because he comes home around 10:00 am the next morning, takes a couple of hours of sleep and then he has the whole day with us. But floors are up next and I heard they are killer, that's when the really crazy schedule begins with him not knowing when he will be home.

[alison]

Floors are bad. Floors at the VA out here are brutal. We weren't prepared for them at all - you've had the chance to brace yourself, so I don't think you'll freak out as much as I did during those medicine floor months.

When you get beyond the intern year, it's much less running around.

There were some lazy ass 3rd-years who were rarely there, jabbered at the interns and left early each day. It sucked. Dh wouldn't let me near the hospital after I delivered him some food once, and got into an argument with one of the 3rd-years.

[mommax3]

The only call schedules I like are the ones we are through with that go in the trash.

I do vaguely remember an intern year rotation on ambulatory medicine that was pretty sweet and the IM rotation that let the interns go home around noon the morning after call.......that is why intern year was wonderful compared with second year. Once the off-service rotations went away, so did the months of respite from the horrible schedule!

Yes, I am bitter, but it is a good-natured bitterness. Call will never go away for us, and currently he is on call half the month, although it is from home......until he has to go in. I think I have earned the right to a little tongue-in-cheek bitterness! (And there are those here that are not so good natured in their bitterness, and I don't blame them ONE BIT!)

Sally