GIM call is in‐house (see call room information below). It is a maximum of 1 in 4 call including one Friday/Sunday, Saturday and several weekdays. All call schedules are within PARA regulations and copies are sent to their attention. Call schedules will be sent via email.
Senior residents should receive an email from Lead Residents about three weeks prior to the start of their medicine rotation requesting dates in which they are not able to do call (for personal and/or educational reasons) and dates they may want to request to be on call. Please note that all requests are considered; however, from time to time all requests cannot be accommodated. Lead Residents will then coordinate the requests accordingly and put together the call schedule for your team and forward to Carrie for distribution.
Senior residents will have 2 weekends off per block, and are expected to round one of the two weekend days on the other 2 weekends if not doing a parachute weekend call.
For call responsibilities, senior residents are primarily expected to cover for emergency consults. However, they will also cover any acute or emergent concerns on the GIM wards, ICU transfers, and Ward consults. See the Emergency consult section for more information.
There is a GIM Emergency consult team that triages all admissions. Once the Emergency Consult medicine resident has triaged a patient to be appropriate for admission, they will be calling students and junior residents to do admissions for patients.
All admissions are to be done by students, junior residents, or clinical associates and to be reviewed with senior residents.
If a learner is covering a ward, any patient on that ward is now under their ownership (including new emergency admissions or ICU transfers). If a patient arrives on your ward, you should be called by either the senior resident or the nursing staff to inform you that you have a new patient. If that patient was admitted by the senior resident or another learner on-call at that time, proper handover should be given between colleagues to ensure proper care of that patient.
If cross-covering for another ward, please go to that ward at around 4 PM to receive handover from the Attending physician or senior resident regarding the ward patients.
Once the schedule has been made, we ask that no switching take place. However if absolutely necessary, the following guidelines are in place:
The switch must be between resident/resident or student/student. Switches between resident/student will not be permitted except for extraordinary circumstances (i.e. illness, grievance, etc).
Every resident is responsible for completing one Friday/Saturday, one Sunday and several weekday calls during a four week block. This is imperative and is enforced.
There must be at least one junior resident on every night.
Effective as of July 1, 2012, the PARA stipends are as follows:
In‐House Call: A resident shall receive remuneration at a rate of $118.02 (weekday) or $178.72 (weekend) for every in‐house call assigned and worked.
Home‐Call: A resident shall receive remuneration at a rate of $59.01 (weekday) or $89.35 (weekend) for every home‐call assigned and worked.
For GIM, the call stipends are submitted automatically by Carrie Hlady at the end of the indicated block. No forms need to be completed by you. If Carrie has any concerns she will contact you directly.
If you have any questions or concerns in regard to the call schedule or the call stipends, please do not hesitate to contact Carrie Hlady directly at carrie.hlady@ualberta.ca.
Information on Numbers to Know
If your battery for your pager has run out, go to Admitting on the first floor during business hours or to Emergency Department Admitting Desk at nighttime/weekends/stats for a replacement battery.