Scheduling and Vacation Guidelines

The Family Practice Center schedule is normally made out two months in advance. Vacation and conference requests must be in prior to this two-month lead time. Each resident is responsible for participating in schedule review to help identify and resolve scheduling conflicts.

Time Off Guidelines

1. No more than one third-year resident or second-year resident on each team may be off at the same time.
   
   
2. Vacation and meeting times must be scheduled in a way that ensures that appropriate coverage is maintained on each team.
   
   
3. Providers must appropriately prepare for an upcoming vacation or meeting, attending to the following before leaving:
   
   a. Identify a partner who will take care of your patients, labs, or x-rays in your absence.
   
   b. Notify the Family Practice Center Manager who will be covering your patients, labs, and x-rays in your absence.
   
   c. Be watchful in scheduling return visits for patients you see prior to leaving. Do not schedule your patients back for a time when you will be gone unless necessary. Be sure to communicate this to patients who must be scheduled prior to your return.
   
   
4. Meeting and vacation requests must be made 60 days in advance. Requests made after a schedule has been finalized cannot be accepted. It is the resident's responsibility to complete their vacation — CME requests and submit this request to the Chief Resident in a timely fashion. If the request is made within the 60-day time frame, the Chief Resident has the authority to review and approve the request. If a request is made past the 60-day time frame, it will then need to be directed to the Residency Program Director for his review. Once requests are approved, they are given to the Department Secretary and placed on the Master Vacation Sheet and distributed accordingly.
   
   
5. Vacation and meeting times for residents should be discussed and worked out at the team level as early in the year as possible to avoid bunching of time off. Also staff vacation should be communicated at the team level so that all members of the team are informed.
   
   
6. Second and third year residents are required to take one week of their vacation — CME prior to January 1 of the current academic year
   
   
7. No vacation — CME requests are allowed during academic week or during FPS rotation.
   
   
8. Days contiguous with holidays (i.e., the Friday after Thanksgiving) are considered regular work days. The residents obligations are to his/her service on these days. For these days, if you are on a service that will not be seeing patients, you have a free day. However, if you are on a service that works a full or partial day, you are expected to follow your attendings' lead and work the day as your attending does. For these days, you may choose to utilize a vacation day if your service is working but you would like to create a long weekend.