Duty Hours PolicyBackground - During the clinical years, Feinberg medical students should assume an increasing level of professional responsibility, learning to care for patients with dedication, integrity, and compassion. One of the challenges of becoming a physician is learning to fulfill one's clinical responsibilities without sacrificing one's own physical and mental health. The clinical years should provide an environment in which students can attend both to their education and to their personal well-being as they develop into physicians.
Policy - Medical students must not be required to work more than resident physicians, whose duty hours are regulated by the ACGME.
- Duty hours are defined as any clinical work or required educational experiences (e.g. conference, lectures, exams); they do not include time at home to study or travel time to and from clinical sites.
- Medical students must not work more than 80 hours per week.
- Medical students must not work more than 24 consecutive hours caring for patients. After 24 hours, they may continue to work for up to 6 hours for continuity of care or classroom experiences, but may not assume care for new patients during this time.
- Medical students must not be scheduled for call the night before an exam.
- Medical students must not be scheduled for overnight call the night before IDM.
- At minimum, medical students must receive an average of one day off per week over a four week rotation.
- With the exception of Thanksgiving, University holidays (e.g. Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day) shall be treated like weekend days, on which students may be on call. For all rotations except sub-internships, the Thanksgiving Holiday shall be observed beginning at 6pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and ending on Sunday evening; these count as days off. During sub-internship rotations, medical students may be required to work during the Thanksgiving holiday.
Monitoring - Within the limitations above, the clerkship directors are responsible for setting medical student schedules on each individual rotation. All scheduling shall be done with the students' best educational interests in mind.
- Any concerns about duty hours should be discussed with the clerkship director. Students should report any violations of this duty-hours policy to Dr. John X. Thomas; student grades shall not be affected by such reporting.
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