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Student Work Hours

Pre-Clinical Student Workload (6.3)

Pre-Clinical Student Workload is defined as the amount of learning contact time scheduled in classrooms, laboratories, small groups, e-learning, and clinical settings each week. These sessions are identified in the class schedule and include both mandatory and non-mandatory sessions.

In order to ensure a reasonable amount of student workload and limit the amount of scheduled time during a given week during the pre-clerkship phase of the curriculum, the following procedures should be followed:

  • There should be no more than 30 hours of scheduled time per week averaged over a semester.
  • There should be no more than 8 hours of scheduled time in a given day averaged over a week.

Rationale for Policy/Purpose

To ensure a reasonable amount of student workload and limit the amount of scheduled time during a given week.

Clinical Student Work Hours (6.3)

Required core and selective clerkships:

  • The average time a student spends on clinical duties in the hospital during a required or selective clerkship should not exceed 65 hours/week.
  • Students should not exceed 16 consecutive hours of clinical duties in the hospital for required core or selective clerkships.
  • Students will receive on average at least 1 day off in 7 during a required or selective clerkship.

 

Advanced clerkships (required and elective):

  • The average time a student spends on clinical duties in the hospital during an advanced clerkship should not exceed 80 hours/week.
  • For advanced clerkships, students should not exceed 24 consecutive hours of clinical duties in the hospital. However, a 24+4 rule is in place which allows an extra four hours that can be used to finish work on overnight patients (sign off, check a lab result if students are curious to see the result of an intervention that they did during the night, or to attend a particularly important morning conference).  Students should not pick up new work during that time.
  • Students will receive on average at least 1 day off in 7 during an advanced clerkship.