average work week for internal medicine

[Guest copacetic]

hey, anyone know what they average work week for internists is? i know some subspecialties are busier/less busier, but i dont want to know about the subspecialties. just internal meds without a fellowship.

[cricket]

sorry this doesn't really help you question, but anyone who knows relative work hours for any of the different subspecialties in internal meds, feel free to post!

[Satsuma]

General internists have the potential to work alot of hours.

 

No matter the specialty you choose, your work hours will depend on practice setting, location, and to some extent your own ability to say no.

 

Specialties that tend to be busier are the ones that have the potential to be called at night with emergencies (so something like cardiology) and the ones that tend to have more regular hours are those that are less likely to be called at night or have emergencies (such as rheumatology for example).

But that doesn`t mean that all cardiologists are so busy they have no lives outside of their jobs. If you are in a larger centre with a decent size group then your call can be reasonable as it will be shared among the staff. If you are the only cardiologist in the middle of nowhere, well there will be nobody else to call but you. (though I guess you would have a smaller population base which might help a bit).

 

So it is a tricky question to answer.

When you do your rotations though, you will see some of what lifestyle is like in the area. Though you never really see what it is like to have a clinic in the community...so helpful to ask staff what different practices are like. Often they have an idea.

[RuralDoc]

Another option if you are interested in internal medicine:

 

Do the family med residency and then work only as a hospitalist. It is very interesting and rewarding work. You have access to all the IM sub-specialists at the hospital. You see a lot of patients with heart failure, failure to cope (geriatrics), cancer etc, plus a lot of palliative patients. The work hours are great. I am doing a 2 month rotation with a team of 4 family physician hospitalists. They do not stay at the hospital overnight (which means I don't either!). They wait to admit patients from emerg the next morning. They take turns taking phone calls from home overnight though. Hours are a bit unpredictable. Mondays tend to be busier because you have a lot of new admissions from the weekend. Other days, though, you round on all your patients and can be home in the early afternoon. You tend to have some calls re: meds and vitals, and can usually answer these by phone. Once you go home, there is not a lot of paper work. You also don't have to worry about hiring staff or running your own office. I like it most though, because you have time to read up on interesting cases and you have fewer, albeit more complicated patients than a typical office based family physician.

[bugette]

Is it possible to avoid ward/hospital work as an internist? I know certain specialties are tied more to hospitals, but which subspecialties have little to no required hospital ward commitment (other than rheum, which I don't like)?

 

I like clinic, but find it very stressful to juggle both clinic AND ward/ER duties at the same time. Sometimes things just seem to implode all at once on the ward. I think I would prefer either strictly clinic (e.g. GP or other office-based IM subspecialty) or strictly ward/hospital duties (e.g. hospitalist).

 

Thanks.

[Lactic Folly]

The vast majority of endocrinology and allergy/immunology is clinic based.

[KMG007]

I like clinic, but find it very stressful to juggle both clinic AND ward/ER duties at the same time. Sometimes things just seem to implode all at once on the ward. I think I would prefer either strictly clinic (e.g. GP or other office-based IM subspecialty) or strictly ward/hospital duties (e.g. hospitalist).

 

Thanks.

 

If you do an internal med residency then by the end of the two years of doing your general time especially team medicine you might find you are more comfortable dealing with the ward. Plus I have even heard of general internists doing clinic work only. The thing about a doctor shortage is that doctors are able to fulfill a number of needs and that is one of them.

I'm not a resident or anything, but I have a number of friends that are and some of things I have learned.