In residency a typical day starts off very early with rounds between 5-7am, with some residencies having education before or right after rounds for about an hour. Depending on how busy the list is it may be a list of 15-25 people. You make your rounds, write notes, then cases start usually at 7 or a little after. You can expect to be in the OR all day from 7 until god knows when you finish. If you're a senior you're likely operating all day, juniors typically cover pagers for floor/consults/trauma from the ED. Our program is nice because PA's are doing discharges and most of the floor stuff but you can expect to get a few pages with anything ranging from BS to open femurs depending on where your residency is from the ED. Some days the pager is none stop, other days it's quiet. But as an Ortho resident on the inpatient hospital service you're at the hospital you're basically trying to juggle between cleaning up things on the floor, fielding consults from the floor/ED and responding to major traumas if you're at a trauma center. It can get very overwhelming sometimes but you just learn to adapt. If you really want to know what ortho is like I really recommend doing a rotation on an ortho residency service. Gives you a much better idea what your life will be like for 5 years. Attending life with primarily outpatient elective surgery can be kush, but you gotta work hard to get there.
