Vacations in Medical school

WayOutWestMom
Sun, 08 Jan 2017 18:34:52 +0000

There are some scheduled vacations in medical school. Most med schools have a 2 month break after MS1–although some do run on a compressed schedule and don’t have one. Once clinical training starts immediately at the end of MS2, there are no extended breaks. Med students may get a rare 3-day holiday weekend off if they are assigned to an outpatient rotation, and med students may get a week off for the December winter holidays. But that’s about it. MS4 students have a flexible schedule and can schedule blocks of time not on service because they need time off to do residency interviews–but that time off is busy and not for vacation. Depending on when the med school holds graduation, newly minted doctors have 2-6 weeks off before they need to report to their residency sites in mid-June.

Vacation for residents depends upon the terms of their employment contracts. Most residency programs offer 2 weeks paid vacation. A few offer 3 or 4 weeks. However, you cannot simply announce the week before that you want to take vacation. You need to schedule it with your chief resident at the beginning of your employment year (in July). The chief may or may not be able to give you the dates off you want–it depends on the program’s staffing needs and whether other residents have requested the same week off-- and generally you cannot take 2 weeks off in a row. (You miss too much training.)