Taking short-term leave during clerkship

[Jochi1543]

I recently heard about some people having taken "stress leave" at some point in clerkship, and on a particular rotation rather than taking the entire year off. Does your school allow something like this? What is the policy? I'm just intrigued because not so long ago I was told by a med student who had experienced a major personal/family crisis that s/he was told "either you aren't taking ANY time off for this or you are taking an entire year off." Similarly, another person was only given 2 days to recover from an operation before being told to return to their rotation.

 

If your school has some sort of clerkship leave policy for personal/health reasons, is it different for things like deaths/illnesses in the family vs. personal illness vs. "stress leave"?

[Renin]

My school has provisions for this. I believe it is up to 8 weeks of elective time can be reduced for things like remediation, health problems, pregnancy, etc.

 

Of course, this will depend at what point in her training your friend is in ... you can't use up your elective time if you're not quite there yet!

 

Other schools do not have elective time grouped like my school does, so I dunno how they do it.

 

RE: Surgery - depends on the type of surgery. Did she have a doctor's note saying she needed more time off?

[Jochi1543]

My school has provisions for this. I believe it is up to 8 weeks of elective time can be reduced for things like remediation, health problems, pregnancy, etc.

 

Yeah, we do get some extra elective time above what's required to graduate, but then what would happen if you'd need time off during core rotations? I'd imagine it'd be really difficult to make up that time, since a lot of logistics is involved in distributing students to their core rotations so that everybody can be accomodated. Say, I have appx 19 weeks of core rotations in a row with no time off scheduled, what if something happened and I needed a month off?

 

RE: Surgery - depends on the type of surgery. Did she have a doctor's note saying she needed more time off?

I don't know, but I have a friend at a US school who experienced a brief but serious illness that made him miss a week of a core rotation and his school made him redo the ENTIRE rotation (12 weeks) on his own time. What a nightmare!

[rmorelan]

I don't believe you can at my school as far as I know - the entire year is considered one course and there is no real flexibility with it. They have quite frequently arranged for people to do the year at another time of course. If somehow it was allowed you would have to do remediation in the fall of 4th year likely.

[cardiomegaly]

I recently heard about some people having taken "stress leave" at some point in clerkship, and on a particular rotation rather than taking the entire year off. Does your school allow something like this? What is the policy? I'm just intrigued because not so long ago I was told by a med student who had experienced a major personal/family crisis that s/he was told "either you aren't taking ANY time off for this or you are taking an entire year off." Similarly, another person was only given 2 days to recover from an operation before being told to return to their rotation.

 

If your school has some sort of clerkship leave policy for personal/health reasons, is it different for things like deaths/illnesses in the family vs. personal illness vs. "stress leave"?

 

I'm really interested to know this answer as well. There are a few people on my track who disappeared a few weeks into clerkship and haven't returned.

 

I was under the impression that unless you had a death in the family or you are so sick you are booked for the OR or you are presenting as first author at a major conference, you don't miss a day of clerkship. If you are the best man at your best friends wedding, they don't care. Though the people at student affairs are awesome, so maybe they have more pull at the UME.

 

The course coordinator of my last rotation told us if we failed either the MCQ or the OSCE, our case would be sent to academic standing committee and they would let us know our fate in August 2012. Terrifying.

[Monaco]

Depends on the situation. Talk to student services and course director.

 

You must be present for a long enough duration to a) learn and experience the "objects" of the block, and sometimes for a fair evaluation.

 

Now, we all know there are "educational experiences or activities" where nothing is learnt and others were face time with the evaluator is so sparse to make the official evaluation a joke.

 

Some course/program directors are more flexible than others.

 

If you are an almost-failing student, expect to be asked to make up the time.

 

In the rare cases I know of this happening, the student has taken the entire block off or part of a block off (e.g. a block divided between 2 weeks cllinics and 3 weeks on team). These can be made up in different ways. Sometimes not required at all if you are a good student missing 2 weeks out of 12 weeks total surgical block for extenuating circumstances (e.g. death in family, sickness...usually not "stress" leave).

 

I have not heard of someone being asked to an entire year off. Of course, some blocks and specialties are more flexible and sensitive to student issues.

[Corie]

I believe my school is pretty flexible with it. I've heard of students potentially abusing such system though by taking a week every rotation off on sick leave. The faculty is nice but does their job and monitors for abusers.

[kylamonkey]

I'm not a med student, but I'm kind of getting a gut feeling that a 3-yr program would have more of an issue with this, possibly?