Background
The GMEC approved the Clinical and Educational Work Hours Policy (link) in November 2019, and established the expectation that all GME programs (ACGME accredited and non-ACGME accredited) must develop new clinical and educational work hours monitoring policies by January 2020 with implementation by February 1, 2020. All programs (ACGME accredited and non-ACGME accredited) are expected to ensure that their trainees have adequate rest to be able to perform competently and a mechanism in place to monitor for fatigue.
General Surgery Resident Program Clinical and Educational Work Hour Monitoring Policy
General Surgery residents are responsible for inputting their duty hours inside RMS on a weekly basis. On the first day of the following month, the Program Administrator will remind residents to complete their duty hours and will follow-up with those that have not completed five days after the reminder was sent.
On the 6th day of the following month, the Program Administrator will pull an RMS report of incomplete duty hour submissions as well as duty hour violations and share with the Program Director and Administrative Chief Residents in order to review and discuss with those individuals that are not in compliance.
Bi-monthly, the Program’s Resident Leadership Council will review and discuss 2-months’ worth of duty hour violations per service and pgy-level. If there are trends, the Program Director and Administrative Chief Residents will reach out to those services and/or residents, violating duty hours, to help understand why violations are occurring and help to resolve them.
Quarterly, the Program’s Resident Leadership Council will review a 4-month trend of duty hour violations per service and pgy-level. It will again review for trends. The Program Director and Administrative Chief Residents will make recommendations for rotation adjustments as well as reach out to residents who are violating duty hours. The information provided by the quarterly RLC meeting will then be included to the GME’s required quarterly report.
TO NOTE:
Residents that are at risk of violating work hour rules have an obligation to proactively inform program leadership so that coverage can be arranged to avoid violation. Programs must provide alternative coverage for a resident’s clinical responsibilities if they are found to be too fatigued to continue.
Concerns about continuous work hour violations not adequately addressed by the program can be reported to the Designated Institutional Official at gme@umn.edu. Anonymous reporting of work hour violations can occur via a Qualtrics form.
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