The American Board of Radiology is mulling vacation and family leave limits on physicians during residency, in a move that’s drawn concern from some in the imaging community.
Parent organization the American Board of Medical Specialties has mandated that its 24 member groups enact such a policy. And as part of the process, ABR leadership recently circulated a letter to program directors with a proposal of four weeks’ vacation per training year and up to six weeks of parental, caregiver and medical leave during residency.
“Please keep in mind that the time periods below represent those related to length of required training for initial certification only and may be different than times allowed by individual departments, institutions and/or jurisdictions,” N. Reed Dunnick, MD, the ABR’s associate executive director, wrote in a letter shared by the Association of Program Directors in Radiology. “Some institutions and/or jurisdictions may allow for significantly greater times for family leave but, as you might imagine, if these times were used for eligibility for certification, we could no longer support the current length of required training.”
Dunnick asked program directors to circulate the note seeking feedback, with a due date of April 15. Radiologists shared some negative reactions to the initial proposal on social media last week.
“Hard not to see this as incredibly regressive and anti-trainee,” tweeted Juan Batlle, MD, MBA, chief of thoracic imaging at Baptist Health South Florida.
“Considering the ABR thinks we know all of radiology by the end of our third year when we take the CORE exam, I would say residents deserve way more than 6 weeks,” added Colorado radiologist Taj Kattapuram, MD.
Top leaders with the Tucson, Arizona-based physician-certification group outlined further details about the process in a March 20 blog post. They hope to develop a “reasonable plan” addressing this issue and meeting the ABMS’ requirement by July 1.
“We are particularly interested in your recommendation of the maximum number of days or weeks (per year or total) that a resident can be absent for any reason before an extension of training would be needed,” wrote President Vincent Mathews, MD, and Executive Director Brent Wagner, MD.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.