doctorbetty Posted January 4, 2011 Report Share Posted January 4, 2011 As a general practitioner just starting out, how many hours per week do you have to put into your practice? I would love to go to medical school, but the rumurs of 80+ hr work weeks are likely to be damaging to my relationship! Thanks for any advice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supafield Posted January 4, 2011 Report Share Posted January 4, 2011 As a GP, and in other areas of medicine there are ways to work as much or as little as you want. You can find part time positions or reduce your hours. You just have to keep in mind that you need to be available to your patients in a responsible manner. What you can't avoid however is clerkship and residency. Clerkship, you're in there for the hours that the discipline works, and you still need to study on top of that. It can make for some wild weeks during surgery or internal med rotations. For family med residency, while you will spend a good amount of your time in a family medicine type environment which will generally put you at 45-60 hours a week... you'll still have your rotations in OB/Gyn, etc. that will see you put in 75-80+ hours those weeks. From an info session I attended the family med residents said they worked about 50-55 hour weeks half the year and then 75-80 hour weeks the other half. So while you could come out of all that and work 30 hours a week as part of a group practice, or take occasional shifts as a hospitalist... you'll still need to get through at least 4 years of clerkship/residency that will have some pretty long weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardiomegaly Posted January 5, 2011 Report Share Posted January 5, 2011 If you don't have an understanding partner, medicine is relationship suicide. They won't notice much in pre-clinical but from clerkship through residency you'll be a workaholic stress basket. I have friends in upper years who estimate they pulled 100 hour weeks on internal and surgery. And as a resident, usually your professional organization protects you to 1 in 4 call, but over holidays some services do 1 in 2. Plus you factor in research projects, your chief year...no matter what discipline it isn't pretty. It can be done, but if you want to have a happy relationship with lots of time to spend with your significant other and the prospect of having kids without compromising your work life before 30 I wouldn't pick medicine. Those are some sacrifices that I really thought about before applying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted January 6, 2011 Report Share Posted January 6, 2011 fm is a 2 year residency? As a GP, and in other areas of medicine there are ways to work as much or as little as you want. You can find part time positions or reduce your hours. You just have to keep in mind that you need to be available to your patients in a responsible manner. What you can't avoid however is clerkship and residency. Clerkship, you're in there for the hours that the discipline works, and you still need to study on top of that. It can make for some wild weeks during surgery or internal med rotations. For family med residency, while you will spend a good amount of your time in a family medicine type environment which will generally put you at 45-60 hours a week... you'll still have your rotations in OB/Gyn, etc. that will see you put in 75-80+ hours those weeks. From an info session I attended the family med residents said they worked about 50-55 hour weeks half the year and then 75-80 hour weeks the other half. So while you could come out of all that and work 30 hours a week as part of a group practice, or take occasional shifts as a hospitalist... you'll still need to get through at least 4 years of clerkship/residency that will have some pretty long weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmorelan Posted January 6, 2011 Report Share Posted January 6, 2011 fm is a 2 year residency? Yes, it is the shortest of all the specializations in terms of training time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted January 6, 2011 Report Share Posted January 6, 2011 there's always pathology, psychiatry, fm (it's only 2 years even though some of the rotations are long), physical medicine and rehab, community med, public health, er... so not all hope is lost you will work your ass off in some clerkship rotations and rotating year rotations in your first year of residency though If you don't have an understanding partner, medicine is relationship suicide. They won't notice much in pre-clinical but from clerkship through residency you'll be a workaholic stress basket. I have friends in upper years who estimate they pulled 100 hour weeks on internal and surgery. And as a resident, usually your professional organization protects you to 1 in 4 call, but over holidays some services do 1 in 2. Plus you factor in research projects, your chief year...no matter what discipline it isn't pretty. It can be done, but if you want to have a happy relationship with lots of time to spend with your significant other and the prospect of having kids without compromising your work life before 30 I wouldn't pick medicine. Those are some sacrifices that I really thought about before applying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted January 6, 2011 Report Share Posted January 6, 2011 yeah, i saw the 4 and was like huh... that's not right Yes, it is the shortest of all the specializations in terms of training time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmorelan Posted January 6, 2011 Report Share Posted January 6, 2011 yeah, i saw the 4 and was like huh... that's not right Yeah I think they were adding in the 2 years of clerkship as also being a part of the required stressful times of the training. Although I should say there are sometimes in clerkship that don't seem that stressful at all (at least at some of the schools). I guess since may be people do add on a +1 year for the varied options it can be up to 5 years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hastin11 Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Yeah I think they were adding in the 2 years of clerkship as also being a part of the required stressful times of the training. Although I should say there are sometimes in clerkship that don't seem that stressful at all (at least at some of the schools). I guess since may be people do add on a +1 year for the varied options it can be up to 5 years Just wondering, what are the low workload, non-stressful clerkship rotations? How "low stress, low workload" are they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A-Stark Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Psych by most accounts is pretty chill. Family can be very busy or comparatively relaxed. Expect all surgical rotations to have early mornings and longish days, but not all services are always that busy. A lot of this will vary from centre to centre, but medicine services with sick inpatients (nephro, CTU, cardio) are busier and more "intense" than those that are more consult-oriented (ID, endo, rheum, etc.). Having said that, while I'm being kept very busy, I'm not finding gen surg to be especially stressful yet, despite working on the acute/emergency service exclusively which has handover at 6 everyday. :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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