is there a regulation as to how far you have to be when you are on home call? obviously for sanity purposes you want to be as close as possible but i was wondering if there was an ACGME/institutional regulation regarding this? thank you!
Home call is generally a "gray area" for ophthalmology and other specialties. There is definitely no distance regulations on this. Generally, frequency is not regulated either. At my program, as a PGY-3, I take home call 1 week at a time.
It depends on the institution. There's no ACGME requirement. At one place I interviewed (I believe it was Indiana) you had to live within 15 minutes of the hospital; there were a few other places that had similar requirements. Where I did my residency, there's a hospital rule about seeing emergent consults within an hour of being called, so techinically I guess you have to either live within an hour of the hospital or speed like crazy.
A benefit for the program when you're on home call is that they can get away with not counting it as part of the 80 hour work week unless you are documented to be in the whole time.
