Rads toxic culture?

[noxi]

Spill the tea sisters! Heard stories about toxic cultures at large programs since the city is the main attraction... Heavy call with little support

[anonymouspls]

No toxic culture at my school (Western), everyone was super nice and the residents are cool too. Transitioned to rad-onc as primary specialty for CARMS for other reasons but can't say anything bad about the place. 

[UWOFTW]

Lol, the major metropolis of fake London.

[Mimish]

Ok, so I don't think my big metropolis is your big metropolis. But you never know. Here comes the tea of what I have witnessed first-hand.

Residents are a very kind, resilient bunch, always huddling together for warmth, backing one another and being there for one another. They have to be, because their attendings and the culture are Enemy No. 1. For one, they are on call every two or so days, though our collective agreement stipulates we can only be on call every three days, with a maximum of 6 in-establishment calls per 28 days and 6 home calls per 28 days, and no back-to-back call, 24-hour call being illegal. Yeah, the program doesn't give a hoot. You are on call as they decide, when they decide and how they decide.

Call computers are about to be fazed out. Before, you would just grab one, go home and read your scans and whatnot from home during call. Now, you'll be stuck staying in the hospital to have access to all the software. Call starts in 2nd year, after minimal exposure to actual radiology since the program hasn't been revised to take into account Royal College examinations are in 4th year of residency now, so they still do a lot of out-of-service rotations.

God forbid you miss something or make a mistake during nigh call! You will hear about it. The twist is that you are NOT allowed to disturb the attending on call during the night. You are not allowed to call them if you are unsure, to disturb their precious sleep, to startle them out of their slumber. That hemorrhagic stroke gotta wait until tomorrow morning 9-10 am.

[RagnarOdinson]

13 minutes ago, Mimish said:

Ok, so I don't think my big metropolis is your big metropolis. But you never know. Here comes the tea of what I have witnessed first-hand.

Residents are a very kind, resilient bunch, always huddling together for warmth, backing one another and being there for one another. They have to be, because their attendings and the culture are Enemy No. 1. For one, they are on call every two or so days, though our collective agreement stipulates we can only be on call every three days, with a maximum of 6 in-establishment calls per 28 days and 6 home calls per 28 days, and no back-to-back call, 24-hour call being illegal. Yeah, the program doesn't give a hoot. You are on call as they decide, when they decide and how they decide.

Call computers are about to be fazed out. Before, you would just grab one, go home and read your scans and whatnot from home during call. Now, you'll be stuck staying in the hospital to have access to all the software. Call starts in 2nd year, after minimal exposure to actual radiology since the program hasn't been revised to take into account Royal College examinations are in 4th year of residency now, so they still do a lot of out-of-service rotations.

God forbid you miss something or make a mistake during nigh call! You will hear about it. The twist is that you are NOT allowed to disturb the attending on call during the night. You are not allowed to call them if you are unsure, to disturb their precious sleep, to startle them out of their slumber. That hemorrhagic stroke gotta wait until tomorrow morning 9-10 am.

Are you able to share what program this is? 

[1D7]

I like my program. When I went through the match (quite a few years ago now), the programs that had very challenging environments also tended to have residents who were overly reserved during the socials. This is probably a lot more difficult to evaluate in this era of everything being online.

Regarding call, you can figure out how much call the residents are taking by program size & how many people are on call per day. Usually the very largest and very smallest program will have the highest frequency (very large programs will spread residents to cover individuals hospitals and small programs have few residents). Ideally frequency isn't too high, though I know most programs have had to increase frequency in some way or restructure call due to increased call volumes over the past several years.

7 hours ago, Mimish said:

Ok, so I don't think my big metropolis is your big metropolis. But you never know. Here comes the tea of what I have witnessed first-hand.

Residents are a very kind, resilient bunch, always huddling together for warmth, backing one another and being there for one another. They have to be, because their attendings and the culture are Enemy No. 1. For one, they are on call every two or so days, though our collective agreement stipulates we can only be on call every three days, with a maximum of 6 in-establishment calls per 28 days and 6 home calls per 28 days, and no back-to-back call, 24-hour call being illegal. Yeah, the program doesn't give a hoot. You are on call as they decide, when they decide and how they decide.

Call computers are about to be fazed out. Before, you would just grab one, go home and read your scans and whatnot from home during call. Now, you'll be stuck staying in the hospital to have access to all the software. Call starts in 2nd year, after minimal exposure to actual radiology since the program hasn't been revised to take into account Royal College examinations are in 4th year of residency now, so they still do a lot of out-of-service rotations.

God forbid you miss something or make a mistake during nigh call! You will hear about it. The twist is that you are NOT allowed to disturb the attending on call during the night. You are not allowed to call them if you are unsure, to disturb their precious sleep, to startle them out of their slumber. That hemorrhagic stroke gotta wait until tomorrow morning 9-10 am.

I feel bad for anyone doing 1-in-2 call... I hope their call frequency is much lower in their senior years. I do not think 1-in-2 or even 1-in-4 is sustainable if it lasts most of a residency. However regarding the remainder of your post, honestly most of those things are ubiquitous across Canadian radiology programs.

1. Most programs start independent call around the same time in PGY-2. Yes there is a very steep learning curve. A few programs have more than 1 resident on call at the same site which can help, but that isn't very common.

2. Most residents do not often call staff overnight across any program. In my program we can freely call staff (I can text most of my staff if I want) and they will respond/help, but even then we prefer to try and handle things ourselves.

3. Home reading call stations aren't common. I visited most Anglophone programs across Canada some years back and all the places I visited had their call reading stations in the hospital.

Radiology call is not easy in the modern era—imaging and our expertise has grown to become incredibly important in the care of ER & sick inpatients. This has made residency more challenging; I certainly do not think any radiology resident would say it is easy. I'm still very happy I'm in this specialty and there are still many pluses of it, though it is harder than it appears from the outside.

[hikereh]

On 2/26/2023 at 10:04 AM, Mimish said:

Ok, so I don't think my big metropolis is your big metropolis. But you never know. Here comes the tea of what I have witnessed first-hand.

Residents are a very kind, resilient bunch, always huddling together for warmth, backing one another and being there for one another. They have to be, because their attendings and the culture are Enemy No. 1. For one, they are on call every two or so days, though our collective agreement stipulates we can only be on call every three days, with a maximum of 6 in-establishment calls per 28 days and 6 home calls per 28 days, and no back-to-back call, 24-hour call being illegal. Yeah, the program doesn't give a hoot. You are on call as they decide, when they decide and how they decide.

Call computers are about to be fazed out. Before, you would just grab one, go home and read your scans and whatnot from home during call. Now, you'll be stuck staying in the hospital to have access to all the software. Call starts in 2nd year, after minimal exposure to actual radiology since the program hasn't been revised to take into account Royal College examinations are in 4th year of residency now, so they still do a lot of out-of-service rotations.

God forbid you miss something or make a mistake during nigh call! You will hear about it. The twist is that you are NOT allowed to disturb the attending on call during the night. You are not allowed to call them if you are unsure, to disturb their precious sleep, to startle them out of their slumber. That hemorrhagic stroke gotta wait until tomorrow morning 9-10 am.

that's malignant