In accordance with the PAIRS contract Article 9.1, in order to provide adequate service and care to patients and to enhance the medical education of Residents and so facilitate the realization of their educational objectives, duty hours should be limited to provide a balance of patient care, clinical experience and academics. No Resident will be required to do more than 1 in 4 in-house call or 1 in 3 home call averaged over an academic rotation.
As per the Residency Program Committee (RPC) for General Surgery, an academic rotation is defined as a minimum of three (3) months regardless of the scheduled rotations or the number of consecutive months of General Surgery call periods.
Excess call should be avoided at all costs. If the resident and call schedule coordinator mutually agree to a schedule in which excess call occurs in order to accommodate a special request by the resident, the resident waives his/her right to submit an excess call form. As per the PAIRS contract, “In-House-on-call duty periods that result from any leave of absence granted to any Resident pursuant to this Collective Agreement will also not be considered.”
It is the responsibility of the individual resident to notify a call schedule coordinator within one (1) week of the call schedule being released if they are exceeding the maximum number of call shifts in order to allow for adjustments to be made to the schedule. Excess call forms will not be considered after this one (1) week grace period.
Vacation time, sick leave and leave of absence for any purpose shall not be regarded as time available for on-call duty periods; rather, the number of duty periods shall be pro-rated to the number of days actually worked. (Article 13.0).
Resident Policies/Excess Call/Approved at the March 9, 2015 RPC Meeting