Question about call schedule and duty hours

[as90]

I know that you are suppose to get 1 day out of 7 free from patient care related responsibilities averaged over a period of one month. But I was wondering if this takes into account if someone is taking a vacation day or leave?

Say if I have a week of of my allotted 3 week vacation time during the month, does that mean that my program has fulfilled the requirement of giving me 4 days off for the month and I could work everyday for the rest of the month without a break?

Or is it suppose to be separate from vacation. Just needed some help interpreting this.

Thanks

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[Raryn]

I know that you are suppose to get 1 day out of 7 free from patient care related responsibilities averaged over a period of one month. But I was wondering if this takes into account if someone is taking a vacation day or leave?

Say if I have a week of of my allotted 3 week vacation time during the month, does that mean that my program has fulfilled the requirement of giving me 4 days off for the month and I could work everyday for the rest of the month without a break?

Or is it suppose to be separate from vacation. Just needed some help interpreting this.

Thanks

The M-F vacation days are separate. The weekend days on one side, the other, or both are generally part of the abutting rotation and can be counted as your days off. So lets say you take a 7 day vacation, then have 21 days of rotation. Technically, they can count the sat-sun as "days off", and only have to give you an additional 2 days off during those 21 days.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

From the ACGME:

How should the averaging of the duty hour requirements (e.g., 80-hour weekly limit, one day free of duty every week, and call every third night) be handled? For example, what should be done if a resident takes a vacation week?

Averaging must occur by rotation. This is done over one of the following: a four-week period; a one-month period (28-31 days); or the period of the rotation if it is shorter than four weeks. When rotations are shorter than four weeks in length, averaging must be made over these shorter assignments. This avoids heavy and light assignments being combined to achieve compliance. If a resident takes vacation or other leave, the ACGME requires that vacation or leave days be omitted from the numerator and the denominator for calculating duty hours, call frequency or days off (i.e., if a resident is on vacation for one week, the hours for that rotation should be averaged over the remaining three weeks). The requirements do not permit a “rolling” average, because this may mask compliance problems by averaging across high and low duty hour rotations. The rotation with the greatest hours and frequency of call must comply with the common duty hour requirements. Program directors should check with the specific Review Committee to determine if further guidelines or requirements apply to this regulation. For example, the Program Requirements for Internal Medicine do not permit averaging of the interval between inhouse call.