The Golden Weekend

Hoover  14 May, 2008  Lifestyle, Residency Training

“What’s a Golden Weekend?” you ask. Let’s play a game.

  • It consists of 48 hours of time away from work.
  • Saturday and Sunday are the typical days included in the Golden Weekend.
  • Many people look forward to the Golden Weekend all week long, every week.
  • Medical students and residents look forward to — and receive — the Golden Weekend only once per month, on average.
  • A Golden Weekend is a weekend that most “regular people” experience, on average, four times per month.
  • The Golden Weekend can be used for short-term travel, bar-hopping, hiking, or just lounging around the house and sleeping.

Give up?

The “Golden Weekend” is a term coined by residents. It typically refers to the weekend in which you have both Saturday and Sunday free from all clinical duties. Since many residents only get one weekend per month completely free from the hospital, the term is derived from the notion that “it feels golden to have your entire weekend off.”

Only in medicine.

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5 Comments so far »

  1. CC said

    May 15 2008 @ 6:28 pm

    Medicine is so incredibly perverse. Part of the incentive to get an education, training, and a good job is to avoid working all the time (and at odd times.) But here (and not just for residents, but attendings as well), something the majority of the working public (with good jobs) takes for granted is considered a special privilege . Doctoral school so you can work the same hours of a pizza delivery man.
    Some doctors manage to avoid working weekends, but there are not many fields in which it is anything approaching the majority.

  2. Michael Rack said

    May 17 2008 @ 1:25 am

    Residents today have it easy. When I was a medicine resident, we only got 2 days off per ward month. There were no golden weekends.

  3. Zuwie said

    May 17 2008 @ 10:13 am

    I am a pathology resident, and most of my weekends are “golden”. We only have to come to work one Saturday a month, and only in a few months a year. Clinical residents think we “don’t do anything” as a result, although we do a lot.

    Actually, I would like to point out how as a result of their insane workload clinical residents treat everyone who has a regular schedule as a lazy bum.
    Examples: ordering frozen section consultations with no clinical indication, just “I want to know what it is” or hounding laboratory personnel demanding that their precious patient’s test be done immediately. Never mind that it was submitted late, without a label and there are 200 other equally precious tests to run, with equally persistent clinicians. Oh, and gosh darn it, bacteria don’t grow fast even if you yell at them and talk to their supervisor.

  4. Hoover said

    May 18 2008 @ 1:06 am

    Yo Zuwie, nice to see you back around. Enjoy those weekends! I think you made a wise choice with pathology.

  5. Sarah said

    June 17 2008 @ 8:11 pm

    There are other jobs where people barely have weekends off either. For example, during my first year in Investment Banking I only had two “Golden weekends” off the ENTIRE YEAR. In am near the end of my second year and have only had two full weekends off during the past 4 months. And at least you know when your weekend off will be in advance, so you can actually try to make plans for that time.

    Granted I am making way more than a resident would make, but in the end what I do day to day is not helping anyone. At least your hard work goes towards making this world a better place, shouldnt that should count for something in your mind? And when you ARE earning the big bucks after residency, market downturns will not make you fear life!

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