Do some residents doctosrs get to pick who their patients are or are they assigned?

Question

My hospital assigns them. What is the general policy in most hospitals?

(I'm referring to when they're doing their rotations. )

Answer 1

Patients are assigned in every residency program I have seen. Now once you are assigned to a rotation, you may get to divide the patients on the service with another intern or resident, although in my experience it was the senior resident overseeing the junior interns/residents who made this decision. Once we all got to know each other, we would work together and try to make the assignments of equal work and interest. In many cases it depends on who comes into the hospital when you have the duty - are on call for new patients.
For internal medicine we usually had two interns and one upper level resident per team assigned to certain attending physicians. The attending physicians did not care who took which patient. That was up to the call schedule and the interaction among the team. I would pick up more heme/onc patients because that was where I was heading for a sub-specialty. This varies depending on the rotation and the rapport with the senior resident of the team - and of course there is variation from hospital to hospital depending on how the residency program is set up. I became a chief resident, so I had oversight of all the rotations through internal medicine for my last year. I tried to make it interesting and fair for everyone. Of course the main concern should always be what is best for the patients.

Answer 2

If you let doctors pick which patients they're going to see, doesn't that set a bad precedent?