American Board of Radiology grants 8 weeks of vacation and family leave during residency
The American Board of Radiology (ABR) announced its anticipated new vacation and family leave policy on Wednesday, granting residents up to eight weeks of time off during each academic year.
ABR is asking constituents to stick within that 40-workday window to remain eligible for initial certification without an extension of training. The announcement comes after parent organization the American Board of Medical Specialties earlier this year mandated that all 24 of its member groups enact time-off guidelines.
“The policy was created with extensive input from candidates, program directors and other stakeholders representing numerous professional associations and specialty societies,” ABR President Vincent Mathews, MD, said in a post shared June 30. “We realize that family leave is an important matter that our trainees and programs must address,” he added later. “We believe that our policy provides our constituents as much flexibility to navigate this issue as that of any medical board.”
ABR will average the leave over the duration of residency to provide such flexibility. Its policy will take effect with the 2021-2022 academic year, and residents who started training before then can apply for an exemption, Mathews wrote.
The eight weeks includes vacation along with bereavement, interview days away from the institution, parental and caregiver leave and sick time. Those who exceed the allotment must extend training beyond their planned graduation, Mathews noted. This can be hashed out with the resident’s program director but needs to “at least equal the excess number of workdays missed.”
Imaging advocacy groups in mid-April had urged the ABR to allow 12 weeks of family leave during residency, along with four weeks of vacation per year. The recommendation was endorsed by nine different organizations, including the American Association for Women in Radiology. Kirti Magudia, MD, PhD, the lead author of the piece in Academic Radiology, applauded ABR for its new policy.
"The published policy allows up to 16 weeks of family/medical leave if a resident takes four weeks of vacation per year in a four-year residency program, paving the way to normalizing family/medical leave in medicine with consideration of physician well-being and ultimately promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in our specialties," Magudia, an abdominal imaging and ultrasound fellow with the University of California, San Francisco, said by email.
You can read the full residency leave policy here.
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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.