<p>Hospitalists will be doing shift work, very similar to the way doctors in the Emergency Department do. At some places that may be as few as three 12-hour shifts per week, plus any additional time spent transferring care to the next shift, as well as finishing tasks on those patients who are admitted to your service 10 minutes before your shift is over. </p>
<p>Hospitalists will not be “on-call” in the traditional sense because they have no real patients of their own. But on the other hand, a hospitalist’s job/time spent is going to most closely resemble what it’s like when you’re on-call - responding to acute changes, answering pages to write orders for pain pills or anti-nausea meds etc.</p>
<p>You also have to realize that shift work is shift work. By that I mean, there are no holidays. If you normally work on tuesdays, and Christmas falls on a Tuesday, then you’re going to be at work on Christmas Day (and New Year’s for that matter)</p>
<p>As for availability…like most things in medicine, I feel pretty confident in saying there’s a significant regional bias, despite the fact that I have no real data. Certainly limited to bigger cities, and probably more prevalent in those cities with academic medical centers simply b/c of the number of physicians produced who will ultimately remain in-town after their training.</p>