How many hours do residents in EM work per week or month?
How many hours of work per week?
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Depends depends depends. Depends if you are rotating on or off service, depends if you are a PGY1 or a PGY3. The higher up you go, the less hours you work (generally).
We do 19-20 12s intern year and significantly less each year after.
Q, DO
We do 19-20 12s intern year and significantly less each year after.
Q, DO
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The EM RRC specifically states that EM residents (and I presume other residents as well) may work no more than an AVERAGE of 60 hours per week over a 4-week period. That does not include conference time. You also may not work more than 12 hours per shift and must have off at least as many hours as you worked before returning to the ED. For example, if you work a 7a-7p then you cannot return to work before 7a. If you worked 7a-5p you cannot return to work until 3a. This may not seem like many hours, but remember that when you work in the ED you are generally working non-stop. There are usually not breaks for meals. There are no conferences during shifts as there are for medicine and other specialties.
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Its 80 not 60. Nice try. I work 22 9s per month in the ED with 20 hours per month of conference time. Off service, I've worked from 97-30 hours per week.
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The guidelines are, in fact, as I outlined above, with the exception that I did not specifically say that this was true only for ED rotations. You can check out the following ACGME document which discusses these guidelines in detail.
http://www.acgme.org/downloads/RRC_progReq/110pr101.pdf
Pay attention to #7: Duty Hours.
Programs have more discretion when arranging off-service rotations.
http://www.acgme.org/downloads/RRC_progReq/110pr101.pdf
Pay attention to #7: Duty Hours.
Programs have more discretion when arranging off-service rotations.
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7. Duty hours
a. Emergency medicine rotations
1) As a minimum, residents shall be allowed 1 full day in 7 days away from the
institution and free of any clinical or academic responsibilities, including planned
educational experiences.
2) While on duty in the emergency department, residents may not work longer
than 12 continuous scheduled hours. There must be at least an equivalent
period of continuous time off between scheduled work periods.
3) A resident should not work more than 60 scheduled hours per week seeing
patients in the emergency department and no more than 72 duty hours per
week. Duty hours comprise all clinical duty time and conferences, whether
spent within or outside the educational program, including all on-call hours.
a. Emergency medicine rotations
1) As a minimum, residents shall be allowed 1 full day in 7 days away from the
institution and free of any clinical or academic responsibilities, including planned
educational experiences.
2) While on duty in the emergency department, residents may not work longer
than 12 continuous scheduled hours. There must be at least an equivalent
period of continuous time off between scheduled work periods.
3) A resident should not work more than 60 scheduled hours per week seeing
patients in the emergency department and no more than 72 duty hours per
week. Duty hours comprise all clinical duty time and conferences, whether
spent within or outside the educational program, including all on-call hours.
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Open mouth, insert foot.....
Hmmm....I never saw that before. So how does one work 6 12s in a week and keep it under 60? I guess that means mandatory 2 days off a week in the ED huh. We never work more than 6 9s so I guess we're legal.
All of that, of course, pales in comparison to the difficulty in working less than 80 on a trauma rotation.
Hmmm....I never saw that before. So how does one work 6 12s in a week and keep it under 60? I guess that means mandatory 2 days off a week in the ED huh. We never work more than 6 9s so I guess we're legal.
All of that, of course, pales in comparison to the difficulty in working less than 80 on a trauma rotation.
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We do 6 10's - I'd much rather do more hours, fewer days (like 5 12's).
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it's averaged. so if you do 6 12's in a row and then get multiple days off... you're only working 6 12's in say 10 days and that works out to less than 60 hours over 7 days when averaged over 1 month.
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If I am not mistaken, the new guidelines indicate that you need a minimum of 10 hours off in between shifts regardless of how long the shift was. I believe that it used to be you needed an equal amount of time off as you just worked but it is now down to 10 hours as a flat rate.
In addition, I believe that you can work no more than 80 hours a week when averaged over either 2 or 4 weeks and you need 1 day off in 7 averaged over 2 or 4 weeks.
In addition, moonlighting at an institution which is affiliated with your hospital counts to total duty hours whereas if you moonlight at an institution not affiliated with yours, it does not count.
As for us, we are scheduled for the number of days in the month minus 10 (Chief residents minus 12). Now, some of the days off are either conference days or it may be that you are scheduled from 10pm-8am on a Monday are "off" on the TUesday and come back on the Wed.
In addition, I believe that you can work no more than 80 hours a week when averaged over either 2 or 4 weeks and you need 1 day off in 7 averaged over 2 or 4 weeks.
In addition, moonlighting at an institution which is affiliated with your hospital counts to total duty hours whereas if you moonlight at an institution not affiliated with yours, it does not count.
As for us, we are scheduled for the number of days in the month minus 10 (Chief residents minus 12). Now, some of the days off are either conference days or it may be that you are scheduled from 10pm-8am on a Monday are "off" on the TUesday and come back on the Wed.
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Yale is 20 12's for intern year, 16 12's 2nd yr, 16 8's and 12's 3rd yr, 16 8's 4th yr....At least that is how it was during my time there...
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strongly recommend looking for a program that pyramids down like the one listed above. Being an intern is rough no matter what, but working right up to the limits as an intern when you're in the dept fewer months means that you'll be working much more tolerable hours as a senior when you'll want the time to study for boards, moonlight or just generally enjoy not being an intern anymore. Putting in the hours and seeing lots of patients and learning the nuances lot of different attendings and seniors use to manage similar cases is just as important as reading in the intern year.
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Lots of people saying they'd rather work more hours fewer days. Wanted to throw my two cents in for the other way around. Working only 8-9 hours a day leaves you an evening (or a morning) to read, do chores, work-out, go biking/climbing etc. Working 12s (read 13-14s) means you go home, eat, and go to sleep. So what if you get one more day off a week. I get an extra 5 evenings.
