Time off and Vacation for Residents / ACGME Guidelines

[ARCOS]

Good Afternoon:

I placed a question in the other forum and am hoping to hear from those who have a core Residency program that sends your Residents to another institution for a short term Ortho Peds or Peds rotations. Where is it written in the ACGME Guidelines that Residents are to receive 1 week off every 4 months? I have spent hours trying to locate this information and I need to present to my Director. We have a Resident stating that because she is visiting us for 4 months, that she is to get 7 days off (we offer 1 day per month for those here 2-4 months accordingly). That is an awful lot of time for a 4 month rotation, to include weekends off and Post Call days. I am in dire need of input.

Thank You.

Donna

[ARCOS]

Have you contacted her home program? The time they get off should be part of what they get from their program per year. Have they given you any guidance? Also, your program should have an agreement with the home program as to what is appropriate – they may not know about this at all. I don’t think the Requirements speak to this. We have never had a problem with this. Best Luck!!

[ARCOS]

Laurel: Thanks for the reply. In a nutshell a Resident it’s an ACGME requirement that every 4 months they get a full week off. I reached out to a couple of coordinators who hadn’t heard that and I checked our PLA. I emailed Dr. Derstine/ACGME who stated there isn’t an ACGME guideline stating that and also replied with this:

“The RC has no requirements about vacation time – the expectation is that vacation policies comply with the institution. If your site is used by an ortho program, then the PLA for use of the site by that program should specify the policies that apply to that rotation – either it will be the program policy of the policy of the site. If the current PLA does not, the program director needs to ensure that an updated PLA is prepared and singed by the program director, site director, DIO and the responsible institutional official at your site. Both the program and site need to have a copy of that PLA on file”

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by ARCOS.

[ARCOS]

Thanks for sharing Dr. Derstine’s comments with us, Donna. I didn’t think there was a requirement by the ACGME regarding how vacations were to be taken. For our program, we have our residents take a week of vacation every 3-months block to keep them from getting burned out.

[ARCOS]

Kim, thank you for your feedback as well.

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