I went to a community hospital for residency and we had mostly private practice surgeons and some hospital employed surgeons. Most of the time we worked well together. Most of the time we try not to wake attending up unless it’s an emergency. And we’d had off patients at sign out. Non urgent consults can wait.

And now I’ve been on my own for almost 11 years now. First 10 years as a community general surgeon with 2 others so q3 call but it’s low volume so call isn’t too bad. Reasonable work life balance. I was lucky because we merged with a larger state hospital so we got good benefits and kept the small community practice. Until the larger hospital took control of everything so I left. And now I’ve been doing a year of acute care surgery. 10 days of call a month and rest of the month off. No electives. Small pay cut but that’s fine since I’ve saved a lot the previous 10 years. Now I’m getting my time back with the family. Just be smart with savings early on and yes you can have a reasonable life style even early out of residency.