How much sacrifice to Family/Social Life do doctors have to make?

[EliteAssassin23]

I am a first year biomedical engineering student. I have always thought that medicine would be a fulfilling career for me and that I have what it takes to be a good doctor. However, I am worried about the time commitments that being a doctor requires, even after going through the arduous residency programs. I read that average doctors work between 50-60 hours and are on-call for another 30 hours on top of that.

So my questions are:

 

1. How difficult would it be for physicians to maintain a healthy family/social life?

2. From what you hear, how does the time commitments of physicians compare to that of other careers (engineers, management consultants, accountants, lawyers etc)?

3. How much flexibility do physicians have when it comes to being on-call (do some specialties require less on-call?)? Also, how much additional work does on-call usually entail?

 

Thanks

[cardiomegaly]

Keep in mind there is a difference between when you are staff and when you're a student/resident. I always remind people of this because it takes 6-9+ years to become a staff, and for most of us that will be the majority of our 20's when a lot of people make pretty huge life decisions - getting married, having kids etc.

 

Pre-clinical student (Year 1-2) - pretty easy, might be stressful around exams

Clerkship (Year 3-4) expect to work minimum 50 hrs/week and up to 100 hrs/week on surgical and MTU rotations

Residency - some are cushier than others, but in general most residency programs are quite demanding, expect ~ 80 hours per week.

 

Once you're staff, your flexibility depends on your specialty. Family medicine is the most flexible and if you choose not to, you don't have to do call.

 

I'm sure you could have comparable commitments to engineers, accountants and lawyers but there is a lot of variability in those careers as well - lawyers pull a lot of out of office hours too!

 

So I guess the answer to your question is it depends. Your choice of career will determine your control over family and social life. If you choose to be one of 5 thoracic surgeons in the city, then you're on call 1 in 5. If you choose to be an obstetrician gynecologist, you will deliver babies in the middle of the night. If you're a pediatric neurosurgeon in Edmonton, you will be 1 in 2 call. If you're a dermatologist, you will have 9-5 M-F clinic hours.