Daily Clinical Schedule

[SpiderManMD]

What is a typical day/week like during clinical rotations? I understand it varies greatly from rotation to rotation (i.e. Psych vs Surgery), but I am just interested in an estimate. How long is a typical day? How many hours do you work a week? How much preparation and studying do you have to do outside of the hospital?

[dunsoon]

What is a typical day/week like during clinical rotations? I understand it varies greatly from rotation to rotation (i.e. Psych vs Surgery), but I am just interested in an estimate. How long is a typical day? How many hours do you work a week? How much preparation and studying do you have to do outside of the hospital?

It does vary so much rotation to rotation and day to day that it's hard to generalize. But obviously, when you are on a floor rotation for surgery (vs preceptor or urology or something), you will be working from 5:30 to 7, 8, or later. Medicine days are shorter - 7 to 6 usually, peds is similar, psych is probably more 8 to 5, Ob/gyn is like surgery. But some days you may get out early, some days you might be on call or have to stay late unexpectedly. The schedule is rarely conducive to making reliable social plans and if you have an SO they tend to get frustrated with our lack of ability to predict from day-to-day what our schedule will be.

Fourth year is much more laid back and usually no more than 8-5 (or 10 to noon ;) ) unless on sub-I.

[rokshana]

What is a typical day/week like during clinical rotations? I understand it varies greatly from rotation to rotation (i.e. Psych vs Surgery), but I am just interested in an estimate. How long is a typical day? How many hours do you work a week? How much preparation and studying do you have to do outside of the hospital?

it varies from rotation to rotation and it varies from hospital to hospital. More than likely your day will start around 6:30a (some places as early as 5a others as late as 8a), generally with you checking on any patients you are following(checking their charts and then talking to them and doing a quick PE), then morning report, where the night staff turns over the pts to the day staff(this can be as short as 30mins or as long as 2 hours!). Then morning rounds with an attending, visiting each patient on your service and talking about the status of the patient and what's planned for them(this again can be as short as 30 mins - as long as 3 hours(or more!)- depends on the attending. During the day there will be a number of conferences and lectures that will require your attendance- how many and how often is up to the dept- some have an "academic" day- where the whole morning, once a week, is dedicated to lectures, others may have 12noon lectures everyday- just depends. The afternoons may give you some more free time, so you can catch up with whats going on with the patients you are following- checking up on their labs, test, etc. Finally you'll have some sort of turnover to the evening shift, anywhere from around 4p to 6p - this, again can be as short as 30 min to as long as 2hrs, so you'll probably be done around 5-7pm.
Surg and Ob/Gyn have over night calls most places, peds is also over night at some hospitals, IM is long call(usually to 10pm) and pysch doesn't have call. This can vary from hospital to hospital, but you may get some sleep(~2-4 hours if you're lucky), or you may not on over night call.
Generally you don't work on the weekends, unless you have call, then you go in ~ 8A and if overnight, stay til the next morning, if long call, it can vary- some hospitals you just stay til you get a couple of admissions, other til around 10p.
you still need to read and many rotations will have write ups on patients to turn in. Also you may have to do pt. presentations to a preceptor and need to prep for those as well. How much time you spend outside of the hospital on this is up to you.