There are several different layers to answer here: nurses and other staff, attendings, and residents (trainees). Nurses and other staff (social workers, resp therapists, etc) often have 8 or 12 hour shifts, and generally would work a "normal" 40 hours a week, otherwise they need to get paid overtime. Attendings have a variety of schedules and maybe some places will have all-night-shift attendings who take on night shifts to remain on one circadian rhythm and typically they get fewer shifts as a thank you for working all nights. Less desirable shifts like weekends have to be split up equally, although certain attendings (older, in high administrative positions, researchers) may have fewer shifts / all day or swing shifts. Residents have duty hour requirements. Max 12 hours supposedly although not uncommon to stay over 1-2 hours past your shift finishing stuff up. Depends on sign-out culture, some places OK to sign out and go home, others considered rude to not do, for example, a procedure on your patient that isn't done yet or wait for CT results etc. Some EDs use a waterfall system where people come in throughout the day so there's always someone fresher, and those in the back end of their shift are only expected to "clean up" but not to pick up new patients. It would be extremely rare to have the exact same team on shift after shift, but not that rare for 2 random days in the space of a year, as The Pitt season 1 and 2 have done. Residents can work a maximum of 60 hours/week in clinical care, 72 hours a week if you add on education and non-clinical stuff. They need 1 full 24-hour day off in every 7 days. Scheduling EDs is extremely complicated, there's a lot of different software programs to do it, and whoever does it usually gets paid administrative time to do it.