All time off must be scheduled through the Family Medicine Department.
Family Practice residents at UMA clinics are allowed 20 days vacation per year. In addition, they may be absent from the program for 8 weekends per year, which are not counted as vacation days. Ten days may be held over from one academic year to the next, and up to ten days vacation may be cashed-in upon completion of training.
Vacation policy for military residents is the same as for civilian residents. Unused vacation time may be accrued and utilized after completion of the residency program while on active duty.
Vacations may generally be taken at any time providing the resident arranges coverage for his/her clinics, inpatients and imminent inpatients (especially OB's), but it may not be permitted for first and second year residents during the last two weeks of June. Other services may have a specific time during the month when vacations may be taken. Specialty services must be informed in advance of vacation plans. Various departments have restrictions on the total amount of time you may take during rotations as follows:
- Allergy/Immunology (1 month): 1 week of vacation allowed
- Medicine Rotations at VAMC (1 month): 2 days and one weekend allowed
- Methodist Rotations (1 or 2 months): 1 week per month of rotation. No vacations during the first week on a rotation.
- OB at UNMC (1 month): 2 week days and one weekend per month (if only one resident, no vacation allowed)
- Gynecology at EBH (1 month): 2 week days and one weekend. Needs to be Thursday through Sunday
- Combined ENT/Ophth at EBH (1 month): no vacation allowed
- ER at Methodist (1 month): no vacation allowed
- ER at UNMC (1 month): no vacation allowed
- Family Medicine Inpatient at UNMC (3 months): 2 weeks during the three month period. Only 1 resident gone at a time.
- Famly Medicine Inpatient Clinical Chief at UNMC (1 month): No vacation unless there are two clinical chiefs on the service
- Family Medicine at UNMC (1 month): 2 days and 1 weekend if there are 2 residents on the service. Otherwise, none allowed
- Geriatrics (1 month): 2 days and one weekend allowed
- Night float at UNMC, aka. Mole (1 month): no vacation allowed
- Pediatric Rotations:
- Peds EBH (1 month): 2 days and one weekend
- MRI (1 month): one week allowed
- Children's Hospital (1 month): When on Inpatient Pediatrics at Children's, no vacation is allowed. You also cannot leave when on call.
If an OB has to be admitted, you must arrange for a fellow resident to either cover the delivery or cover your pediatric call. Family Medicine residents on this service are paired with a Pediatric resident. This way, if a Family Medicine resident has to go to clinic or deliver a baby, his/her partner will remain in-house at Children's so that all service obligations are met.
- Rural Rotations (2 months): preferrably none taken (one week is allowed)
- Occ/Prev/Comm (1 month): 1 week allowed with 2 months' advance notice
- Urology/Renal (1 month combined): no vacation allowed
NOTE:
- Our departmental policy is that all vacation requests must be turned in by the 1st Teaching Day, two months prior to the desired time off. (Example: for a September vacation, the request must be submitted by the 1st Teaching Day in July.)
- Most other rotations have no specific restrictions insofar as vacation time allowed. A good rule to follow is that one week of vacation time is allowed for each rotation. As previously noted no vacation time is allowed while on the ER rotations.
- A minimum of one month's advanced notice is required on vacation requests from ALL services. This means one month before the first day of the rotation. Some rotations (especially the medicine and pediatrics rotations scheduled through UNMC) have very strict policies on advanced notice. It is best to schedule your vacation at least two months in advance. It is even okay to schedule vacations a year in advance as some departments (i.e. Peds) grant vacations based on chronological order of requests.
- Methodist Hospital would prefer that you not take time off at the beginning of a rotation.
- Residents should avoid putting off their vacations until the last couple months of the year. In the past vacations have, on occasion, been denied or modified because everyone wanted to be gone at the same time.
- If a resident is away from a service for more than one week during a one month rotation or for more than two weeks on a two month rotation, that rotation will be reviewed by the department involved and the Family Practice Program Director in order to determine if the resident should receive full credit for that rotation. This applies particularly to HO IIIs who are in the FP Review Course. Rotations taken to "fill in" the remaining two weeks must be carefully selected in order to meet hour requirements. These rotations will need to be approved, in advance, by the Program Director.
