Does anyone know how accurate the data on Freida is? The average resident work hours reported by Freida are considerably lower than those being reported in the press in stories about limiting resident work hours. Freida reports that the average internal medicine resident works 65 hours/week, Peds 69/week, and Psych 52/week. A story in Reuters today reported that medical residents work an average of 120 hours/week. Who is correct? I hope I'm not being naive, but I really didn't think the average non-surgery resident worked that much.
thanks,
KatieRose

I don't know how acurate Frieda is but I do know that programs try to put themselves in the best possible light so they probably lowball the hours worked. As you have already figured out, an "average" week depends on what you do. I would say an average week in my IM residency varied from 40 hours (rarely, on cush outpatient subspecialty months) to 100-110 on bad ward months where we were getting killed and I had idiots for interns (I promise I am not intern-bashing, nothing made me madder as an intern - but I really did have two idiot interns on my teams, fortunately not simultaneously. They make life SOOOO very difficult). Psyche is a lot of sittin' around, working of course, but no procedures or codes or things of that nature. Surgery and OB are at the other end of the spectrum and demand much more time. Your best bet is going to be word of mouth, so ask when you interview, but ask the residents, not the docs that interview you.

I swear, everyone who reads these posts must feel as if he or she went through residency with me personally I have "shared" so much! :rolleyes: