Matched to Duke, haven't looked into it in detail yet but I think it's similar. We have 3 ambulatory months intern year, a month of vacation, and the other 8 months are Q4 overnight (as far as I understand, not totally sure about all the subspecialty months and I think ICU months are Q3 overnight if I recall correctly). I think that's pretty standard for top IM programs.
Duke is q4 for most of intern year, with the heme-onc month being q5. While it's q4 on VA gen med there's one weekend where you skip a call, so at one point you're about q8 for a stretch. In the CCU you're still q4, although the residents are q3 in the units (so there's no q3 as an intern). Plus, as you mentioned, you get 3 ambulatory rotations and a month total of vacation. And if you get a non-call consult month instead of a call rotation, you may only have 7 months of call. But it's typically 8 months, as you mentioned. The incoming intern class is supposedly going to have a few weeks in the MICU at Durham Regional Hospital, which is a new rotation for interns, so I'm not sure if that'll be q3. I'm also not sure what it's taking the place of.
7-9 months of call is pretty standard from what I saw on the interview trail, and having been through almost 9 of my rotations, I can assure you that it's much more manageable than I expected! Also, I've NEVER gone over my 80-hour average; Duke is phenomenal about making sure that we adhere to the duty hour rules. 80hrs per week is pretty doable, since you always get a day off per week, on average, and you have vacations and non-call months scattered throughout to help you maintain your sanity.
Here's the Duke breakdown:
-Ambulatory - 3 months, broken up into 3 blocks (no call)
-Heme/Onc - 1 month
-Cardiology - 1 month
-Pulmonary - 1 month
-Renal - 1 month
-CCU - 1 month
-Gen Med - 4 months, broken up into 4 blocks; typically 2 of these are at Duke and 2 at the VA, although some do a month at Durham Regional Hospital (Duke-owned community hospital)
-Neurology or consult month - may replace one of the above (not everyone does both pulm and renal, as you're cross-covering both services overnight)
-Vacation - block of 2 weeks, block of 1 week, and 1 week at Christmas or New Years; often you'll vacation is during an ambulatory block, which is why the total of the above is about 13 months instead of 12.
I do, however, believe my life will be a little more bearable than people in certain (unnamed) residency programs.
