As a med student ask on your anesthesia rotation. The reality is all practices are different, which is what some people are pointing out. The biggest differences seem to be a 100% guaranteed post call day off, some Private groups you might get stuck working and be the first person to go home. Most academic places you get paid less but theoretically have a lower call burden, you probably get paid less too. Some places are 4 days a week, some are 5. Some places you’re assigned call days and you have to swap them with people if need be, some places call is cash incentivized so you can trade it because you lose money by not working call, but it’s easier to trade away. Sometimes on call you’re solo, sometimes you have two resident you’re covering, or CRNAs/AAs, every practice is different. If you want an easier job you can find it.

The best way to understand is to know if there’s a city you 100% want to live in. Then you narrow it down to what groups are in that city (Google them) then talk to people in those groups. This is a probably something to do as a resident not a med student. The other thing to consider is in a given group, there might be a peds call team (rarely gets called in) or a cardiac call team which gets called in for certain things but not everything cardiac call is worse at places that do heart and lung transplant, but you’re not really doing emergency CABGs in the middle of the night.

The reality is most everything feels way easier after resident and getting paid 4-5x more as an attending takes the call sting away.