Life as a psychiatry resident (2024)

Hello,

I am curious about the average work hour of a psychiatry resident.
Unfortunately, I don't know any psychiatrists/residents personally that I could ask.

I understand that it would vary widely based on the program but I want to get a very rough idea...

What I am looking for is:
For an average PGY1/PGY2/PGY3/PGY4,
what would be average number of on-call days, M-F work hours (or do some programs have 6 day work weeks?) and vacation days per year?
And are national holidays observed?

I appreciate any input that you may have.
Thank you in advance!

This is so incredibly program specific...are you a medical student?

In general, psychiatry residency is less hours/week than IM (and definitely less than surgery). PGY1/PGY2 tend to be call heavy in many programs and you can expect to work more nights/weekends these two years - personally, it ended up being 60-70% of weekends intern year, 50-60% of weekends PGY-2, and then 10-20% or less after that. Our intern year we did 1 month of night float in the ED, 1-2 months of nights as PGY-2 (ED and state hospital), none after that.

Many programs have 6-day work weeks while you're on an inpatient service (inpatient psych, CL, internal medicine, sometimes neurology).

Long story short - don't expect much free time PGY-1/PGY-2 at most programs, though definitely enough to have decent work-life balance compared to other fields. I think 50-60 hrs/week is probably a fair estimate in general for the first 1-2 years. PGY-3 and beyond tend to be way better and more like 30-40 hrs/week.

Every program is going to be different, as mentioned above, since every program is going to structure things like call responsibilities differently. My program did not have any meaningful call responsibility after PGY-2, and with rare exception the bulk of PGY-3/4 was outpatient work. Our PGY-2 year was significantly more difficult from a time perspective than our PGY-1 year as even though all of our rotations were in psychiatric settings, the hours were generally much greater with lots of call and weekend coverage. This is what I'd estimate I worked by year:

PGY-1: 50-70 hours/week, depending on the rotation
PGY-2: 60-70 hours/week, depending on the rotation
PGY-3: 35-40 hours/week; I was moonlighting 20-30+ hours/week outside of residency duties, so for me my work schedule was essentially unchanged
PGY-4: Same as PGY-3

Is there a difference between academic and community residencies in regards to the hours worked?

Also and this is a weird question- I've been wondering how cultural differences play into the hours worked in residencies. My hunch is that residencies in places with a more laid back, beach/vacation type culture work less hours (i.e. San Diego, Miami, LA versus say New York, Seattle, Boston). Does anyone have any knowledge corroborating this?

tinyhandsbob said:

Is there a difference between academic and community residencies in regards to the hours worked?

Also and this is a weird question- I've been wondering how cultural differences play into the hours worked in residencies. My hunch is that residencies in places with a more laid back, beach/vacation type culture work less hours (i.e. San Diego, Miami, LA versus say New York, Seattle, Boston). Does anyone have any knowledge corroborating this?

Click to expand...

Miami is known for being a workhorse program. Call schedule is pretty brutal according the psychiatry residency spreadsheet. You can find it on reddit. It'll be program specific, you just have to look up the call schedule at each place.

If you're looking for a beach/vacation type place with chill call, consider UTMB - Galveston. There's a psychiatry residency in Savannah, GA, but I don't know much about it's call schedule, I think it's a relatively new residency, too.