Policies

A comprehensive collection of policies may be found in the Policies and Procedures Manual for house officers, which is published annually. A brief overview of ACGME mandated duty hours follows; for all other issues please refer to the downloadable manual.

Duty Hours: PGY 1

To facilitate structured 24-hour call teams, interns often alternate day and night shifts in order to assist the upper level resident in providing 24-hour coverage. Interns are encouraged to aggressively participate in all new admissions as well as management of floor call, in order that they will be prepared to perform as supervisory upper level residents in subsequent years.

Duty Hours: PGY 2-4

Duty periods for upper level residents must not exceed 24+4 hours. Supervisory residents must leave the hospital after a maximal 28 hours of duty. During the additional 4 hours allowed for transitioning patients after the 24-hour call period, residents must ensure an appropriate, effective, and safe transition of care. Residents cannot participate in the care of new patients in ANY setting and cannot attend any outpatient or continuity clinics. Residents must use these 4 hours to properly transition their patients for the oncoming team but may attend educational conferences if time permits.

Residents who exceed the 28 hours of duty hours must notify the Program Director by e-mail within 24 hours and submit complete documentation of each circumstance that mandated the overage of duty work hours. The Program Director will then determine the validity of the explanation and place a rebuttal in the resident's file after thoroughly explaining the decision to the resident. The Program Director will track all violations monthly to determine if there is a program-wide issue that must be addressed. Acceptable justifications for extensions of duty are limited to: continuity for a severely ill or unstable patient, academic significance and relevance of events, or humanistic attention to family or patient needs.