Resident’s must accurately reflect the time and place they work at. The process should be appropriately accurate and minimally burdensome. This is a professional responsibility and an institutional requirement. It helps us oversee the safety and well-being of our residents, and the fiscal integrity of the institutions we work at.

Your duty hours are logged in New Innovations. You need to log: start time, hours worked, type of work or leave, and the place where you worked. Your compliance with this process will be reported to your program weekly, but your hours will be monitored in the institutional GME office.

Here are responses to FAQs (frequently asked questions):

1. If I work at more than one site in a day, how should I log this?

You should not worry about logging lessthan 4 hours worked in a site or a duty type.

Thus, a clinic is usually a 4 hour or longer block and would require an accurate site. Your work for that day might be 7am, 5 hours, clinical duties VA; and then 1pm, 5 hours, clinical duties, JMH. .

If you were however, going to see a pre-op patient at a different site that took about 1 hour, this would not require a separate change of site. If however, you performed an operation that was 4 hours in duration for that day, and the remainder of your duties were at another site, it would require a separate log in for the site.

2. When should I log “overnight call in hospital”?

You should use this category when you are staying in the hospital overnight after or before a day’s work. This is meant to reflect the continuous duty call (usually 24-28 hours) in which you stay in the hospital.

As per the ACGME, On-call duty is defined as a continuous duty period between the evening hours of the prior day and the next morning, generally scheduled in conjunction with a day of patient care duties prior to the call period. To record in-house Call or Post call use the duty type defined as “Overnight Call in hospital”

Scheduled duty shifts (generally eight, 10 or 12 hours in length), such as those worked in the ICU, on emergency medicine rotations, or on “night float”, are logged as Clinical Duties.

3. How are educational conferences like morning report or case conference logged?

These are logged as clinical duties. All required educational activities are considered clinical duty hours during residency training. Elective educational leave is logged separately (i.e. presenting at a conference, etc).

4. Should I log a 24 hour day off if I am on home call?

You should NOT log this as a day off. A 24 hour day off requires that you be totally free of all clinical obligations, including home call and not being responsible for answering pager/beepers.

5. How should I log home call?

You DO NOT need to log home call UNLESS you return to the hospital. When you return to the hospital, you must log the duty hours as previously. Use the “Return to Hospital from Home Call” duty type to logthe hours spent in the hospital after being called in.

6. Do I need to log the place for vacation or sick leave?

No, you do not. Just log when you start your vacation or sick day.

7. What should I do for night float?

Shifts of any duration should be logged by their start time, hours worked, as clinical duties, and site. The system will calculate if you have worked too many nights in a row.