What does it mean when a doctor is "on service"

[Anonymous]

... as in "I'm busy, I'm on 3 different services this week"?

[Anonymous]

it means she is covering an inpatient team: for instance, for an internal medicine doctor, it may mean she is covering all admitted patients for her practice at holy cross, shady grove, and suburban (or, alternatively, all 3 services may be at the same hospital but may be different "teams" - so, she's covering 3 floors or 3 wings at suburban). therefore, she probably rounds on them in the morning before going into work, most private practice docs are still expected to see a full day's worth of patients in the office (but a hospital based group likely gets the whole day off to manage the services), then may need to swing back to manage any new admitted patients or any complications that may arise, and all night long, is the one doctor responsible for fielding every call from every overnight nurse confused about the orders or the plan. she's busy.