Doctors in training often do so in their prime family-rearing years.
A few pediatric residencies are offering part-time residency options, designed for those who also want to raise their own families. Proponents argue that residents can not only get more rest, but also avoid depression, which affected almost a quarter of pediatrics residents.
Combined with the talk of further limiting work hours down to 56 hours per week, I’m sure that programs are examining the option of lengthening residency training in general.
topics: work-hour, residents
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{ 9 comments }
how much interest accures on their loans during the extra time? can they afford it?
A full-time resident hardly earns enough to support a family, particularly in any major city. I am sure a longer training period at a lower pay rate, and potentially with higher benefits expenses. is financially even worse.
The real and unfortunate truth is that medicine and medical training is not a good place to be if you want time and the opportunity for a stable income in your 20s for supporting a family. Medicine is probably the most anti-family profession there is.
I worked in the second lowest paying residency program in the nation 25 years ago and supported a non-working wife and kids at home just fine. It was thin pickings the internship year when I couldn’t moonlight but we still managed to save a little. After that we lived a middle class lifestyle in a stable middle class neighborhood with use of moonlighting, while servicing debt and saving to start a practice later.
I would be able to do so even more comfortably with a part time residency as that would allow for more moonlighting
Some of my fellow residents on the same salary, two working spouses and no kids got behind on credit card debt. They were materially spoiled, undisciplined and poor money managers.
I knew of at least a part time residents then who negotiated a 6 year every other month internal medicine residency.
“probably the most anti-family profession there is . . . “
Except for trucking, the US Army, Navy, and Marines, the merchant marine, long-liner fishing, the merchant marine, policing, the border patrol, aviation, many sales jobs, and I could go on and on and on.
You want some cheese with that whine?
No cheese needed, 9:48. I’m a vet, too, and the statement is true. The military is very pro-family. I don’t mind calling anyone who says differently a liar.
9:42:
Much depends on where you did your residency. The fact that yours ranked second-lowest in pay itself is no indicator as to how well that pay met your needs for essentials like safe housing within the distance permitted by your residency program.
For a resident in Washington, DC, for example, where living costs are very high for even modest accommodations, half of most residents’ pay goes to housing. In New York, many residents have housing subsidies in hospital-owned apartment buildings in order to be able to fulfill the requirements for living within the required distance to their hospital.
Having more time off and then expecting to moonlight more seems at cross-purposes to the point of the OP: less time spent working, more time for family. Moreover, in many places, moonlighting opportunities do not exist or are not available to residents due to state licensing requirements.
Thrift is certainly important as is debt-avoidance, but much also depends on costs and circumstances outside of the range of many hospital residents’ power to choose.
You are right about it not being doable everywhere. I considered the legality of moonlighting and the cost of living. I turned down a residency in the Northeast where I would have had to wait 2 years to moonlight and the cost of safe housing that was acceptable to me was much higher than the salary allowed even though the salary was higher than average.
I don’t consider any of those things out of range of my power to choose. Residents are not powerless regarding where they go. If you can’t afford to live in that dream residency, then you can’t afford that dream residency in that dream town. What is there to whine about? Do what you can afford to do and let somebody whose parents give them money go to the place where they can’t make enough to live.
As for safe housing, I eventually found the safest cheap place to live was a trailer park. I was never in a residency where they tried to tell me where or how far I had to live. They all at least had the decency to provide a bed in the hospital when on call.
There are some great residencies with great opportunities to optimize your skills as a physician that are outside the more expensive major metropolitan areas.
Anon 9:32
Thanks for the post! It certainly is a very interesting topic for me. I am currently in my 3rd year of med school and would definitely like to apply for a part time peds residency position.
Although I keep seeing papers and articles discussing such programs, I am unable to find any info on these part time slots on any of the programs’ web pages. How does one go about finding a part time residency?
Are any of you current part-time residents? I am assuming it is something you discuss before you match…
Second year med student here, and I was absolutely thrilled to discover (just today) that even such a thing as part-time residency existed.
As a vet, I’d like to second the above comments that the military is very pro-family, but they have to be pro-family to counterbalance the high demand they place on their members.
And having worked in a field where CRM and workload management are top priorities (aviation) I would not be surprised one bit to find that everyone in the healthcare system benefits from reduced residency hours. In some jobs, supervisors would quite literally be sued into bankruptcy for treating their workforce the way residents seem to be treated.
If medical accidents were investigated the way aviation accidents were investigated, today’s residency system would be very different. But when a doctor makes a medical mistake, only one person dies. When a pilot makes a mistake, lots of people die, so the medical problem, tragically, gets far less attention.
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