What’s the maximum no. Of hours residents may work per week?

[Bookmark311]

Per week? Per month?Per para regulation

[rmorelan]

https://myparo.ca/your-contract/#maximum-duty-hours for Ontario

Slightly complex as it talks more about days than hours, and 4 week blocks rather than months. Also the start and end times vary by speciality and centre. I worked this out once but may be missing some details here- you can be on call 7 days out 28 days - nothing says you cannot have that clumped in a week mind you other than you cannot have two call shifts back to back. You on paper can start at 5am one day and go until noon the following, have the rest of that day off and start another call shift the following day (ha, the joys of neuro surg - that was a fun block though). There are also weekend restrictions (2 out of 4 off). In a week in theory you could have 4 call blocks each of say ~30 hours given you 120 hours but that would be maximum and the rest of the month would have to be easier. 

In 4 week block you could have 7 call shifts of ~30 hours each, with some of those on the weekend (lets say they is one of each day of the week in your 7, so one Sat and one Sun, and one Friday looping over to Sat etc.) you would end up with 5 week day call shifts of 30 hours, 15 normal M-F shifts, and 2 weekend call shifts. Normal shifts can be 8-5 for many or more extreme. Some fields will force you on call shifts to go to noon (and annoying more than that in some cases but that is not allowed by the rules). Assuming say internal med just as an example at 8-5 normally, and 30 hour call shifts you get something like 15x9hours + 5x30 hours + 2x30 hours = ~ 345 hours in 4 weeks or ~85 hours a week give or take.Then you have your additional research/study time on your own. 

Note that would the most extreme blocks - many other rotations in internal in particular may be much lighter (like no overnight call) and sometimes just because you are on call doesn't mean you are always up all the time. Fields like rads where I have been on call can do 8am to 8am (as opposed to noon) but you are unlikely to get much or any rest. Number of call shifts can drop for many fields later on in training. Point is looking at the extreme cases isn't always going to give you the big picture - no one can really endlessly do the maximum, and most places have system for making things hard but actually possible. 

This all assumes you obey the rules - some residents don't and work more - there would be both internal and external pressures on that.