Medical Residency Duty Hour Policies

No resident will work more than 80 duty hours per week (80 hour rule). Residents can not work more than 30 hours straight in-house (30 hour rule) and must have at least 10 hours off when not on call between shifts (10 hour rule).

Duty Hour Monitoring
Duty hours will be tracked by the UVA GME New Innovations system the first 2 weeks of October and March.

Action Plan for Duty Hour Violations
Any violations will be reported to the UVA GME office and will result in:

  • An immediate meeting with the resident, the Chairman, the Program Director, and the Program Coordinator to review the 80 hour duty hour violation and document its occurrence and causes. At this time, we will re-educate the resident that this is an ACGME duty hour policy that cannot be violated.
  • Review of the resident's schedule and patient load to determine if the volume of patients needs to be reduced to allow the resident to be in compliance with this regulation.
  • A determination if the violation is repetitive on any particular rotation. If needed, a change in the rotation will be made to ensure compliance.

Any resident in violation of the duty hour rule will have their duty hours monitored in New Innovations for an additional four week period to verify compliance.

We do not expect any 30 hour rule or 10 hour rule violations as we do not have in-house call and in general our residents only average 45-50 hours per week. If 30 or 10 hour rule violations are discovered during the monitoring process we will proceed with the same action plan as for the 80 hour violations.