Long story short my friend is a pgy2 psych resident and is requiring surgery and his doc told him he might have to take off 3 weeks of work post surgery to recover, is this possible? Would he use all of his vacation time for this? Is this even allowed or would he have to extend his training? He’s very worried and I’m honestly not sure of the answer
ACGME RRC governs how much time/year you can take off without extending training. Even the most stringent RRCs allow up to 3-4 wks off/year without extending training. This can be done as a medical leave, FMLA, vacation/sick time, whatever. It needs to be cleared with the PD.
For Psych, there is actually a lot of leeway as far as I know, and as long as their PD is OK with it, it shouldn't be a big issue. I've known people to take 6-8 wks off without extending training, but usually this was combined with something like a parental elective (you do a project where you research something about parenting that you learn and present it from a clinical and parent perspective). Another option, fortunately in the time of a pandemic, is distance learning. Many programs are creating "at-home" curricula given the pandemic, so as above depending on the surgery, you may be able to just use elective time.