How much sleep do you get?

[461523]

Please see: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=903846. I mistakenly asked this question in the pre-podiatry forum (although I got a lot of great answers!).

So anyways, everyone said that getting 8 hours of sleep EVERY DAY as a resident is impossible. So now my question is: how much sleep DO you get, and are you able to make up that sleep debt? How do you cope with the lack of sleep? Do you just get used to it? I am interested in podiatry, but am mainly concerned with the lack of sleep during residency. I slept 6ish hours in high school, and it was doable, albeit miserable. :

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[SuperFeisty]

What could you possibly do that forces you to sleep 5 hrs in high school?

 

[461523]

What could you possibly do that forces you to sleep 5 hrs in high school?

I was kind of an overachiever, so I limited my sleep intake, in order to study more.

 

[bobdolerson]

Then you're all prepared for studying when it matters

I would cut that out in undergrad, though. Some of that is actually necessary in grad school, and doing another 4 years of it on top of the 4 years you'll already have will just make life hell. No sense in hating school during the undergrad years that are supposed to be fun. Just enjoy 'em. Party responsibly, get your crap done, make a bunch of friends and have experiences that you'll remember fondly for life, as opposed to just working working working for some goal 10 years away.

Know what you need to do to succeed and get it done. If you want to get into the pod schools with the best reputations, grab a 3.5 sGPA and a 3.5+ cGPA and a 30 on your MCATs and your golden. Everything else is just extra.

If you're looking at med school, the story is a bit different, but honestly, you don't need to kill yourself to get into a good pod school.

 

[461523]

Then you're all prepared for studying when it matters

I would cut that out in undergrad, though. Some of that is actually necessary in grad school, and doing another 4 years of it on top of the 4 years you'll already have will just make life hell. No sense in hating school during the undergrad years that are supposed to be fun. Just enjoy 'em. Party responsibly, get your crap done, make a bunch of friends and have experiences that you'll remember fondly for life, as opposed to just working working working for some goal 10 years away.

Know what you need to do to succeed and get it done. If you want to get into the pod schools with the best reputations, grab a 3.5 sGPA and a 3.5+ cGPA and a 30 on your MCATs and your golden. Everything else is just extra.

If you're looking at med school, the story is a bit different, but honestly, you don't need to kill yourself to get into a good pod school.

Thanks for the reply!

I actually already finished college. I had a non science major, though, so I'm in the process of taking med school prereqs now.

 

[dyk343]

A yellow flag (not quite red) just popped up in my mind.

Its really a question you have to internalize yourself.

If you had to study hard enough (or in detail enough) in undergraduate to only sleep 5 hours a night... grad school will be rough on you. It's 3-4X the amount of work as undergrad. Efficiency is a must to make it through. Do you have that? Can you change your ways?

Again, its a question only you can answer, and maybe not a factor at all as I don't know what was going on at your undergraduate institution.

 

[SuperFeisty]

You can't really make yourself be more efficient if you have very little to do. I find that as the more tasks an individual has, the more efficient he becomes. Until his head explodes...

 

[461523]

A yellow flag (not quite red) just popped up in my mind.

Its really a question you have to internalize yourself.

If you had to study hard enough (or in detail enough) in undergraduate to only sleep 5 hours a night... grad school will be rough on you. It's 3-4X the amount of work as undergrad. Efficiency is a must to make it through. Do you have that? Can you change your ways?

Again, its a question only you can answer, and maybe not a factor at all as I don't know what was going on at your undergraduate institution.

I slept 6ish hours in high school, not college. I got 8 hours of sleep in college (however I majored in a soft science).

 

[ldsrmdude]

I'm not a resident yet (few months away ) but I spent a good amount of time at the program I will be a resident at, and I feel I have a good idea of what the residents do. I think they probably get between 6-8 hours on a regular, not on-call, night. On call, it depends on how much they get called in. Call is taken from home, and not every call requires you to go in. The program isn't huge in trauma, but still gets a decent amount, so on-call they probably get an hour or two less. It also depends on the rotation. I am on general surgery right now, and I am averaging 4-5 hours, but I got this weekend off and was able to get close to 9 hours last night. All the general surgery residents I am working with say you just get used to the lack of sleep.

 

[bobdolerson]

The sleep isn't as big a deal to me as is the motivation to study.

When you get tired, it's tough to consciously make yourself read, read, read and remember when you really just want to curl up in a ball and be warm next to your lady (or just sleep in general ;-))

I sleep around 7hrs most nights when I don't have a heavy workload (that's about all I need to feel well rested), and it drops anywhere from about 4/night to all nighters, depending on how many exams I have that week.

The trick is really just to make the most out of your study time during the day. Most information can be grasped without ridiculous non-sleeping hours if you just study when you're "studying", and not sitting on facebook or some crazy podiatry forum when you /should/ be studying (like I'm doing right now).

You'll learn to be more efficient, and you'll adapt your studying habits to fit the requirements. It's part of being human.