Academic Calendars

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All Clerkships observe Thanksgiving Break and Intersession. All 3rd Year Clerkships observe spring break.

• Thanksgiving Break begins at noon the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, with students returning to their clinical duties on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
• Intercession begins after Thursday responsibilities (including assigned evening shift), with students returning to their clinical duties on the first weekday after January 1^st (Unless January 1^st is on Sunday, in which case January 2^nd is an observed holiday)
• 3^rd year spring break begins at 5pm Friday (or after assigned evening shift responsibilities), with students returning to their clinical duties on the Monday after spring break.

Emergency Medicine Selective

Students typically work morning, evening or overnight shifts. There are occasional weekend shifts. Students may trade shifts if their schedules allow them to do this without breaching work-hour or time-off between shifts limitations.

Family Medicine Clerkship

Students typically do not have clinical duties on the weekends, however some sites schedule students for an occasional weekend or evening clinical session (a clinical session is approximately 3.5-4 hours of scheduled patient care) based on the hours that the site is open for patient care (which you can check on your sites webpage linked from the FM clerkship website).  When evening or weekend clinical sessions occurs, students will get time compensated back during the week, for an average of two clinical sessions per weekday, not including didactic days or any holidays that fall during the week.  Most clinics will run longer than the scheduled patient hours, so you should anticipate approximately an extra hour of time after the scheduled clinical session ends.  Your clinical schedule will be given to you when you arrive at your clinical site.

Geriatric Clerkship

The students schedules are Monday through Friday, with no nights and no weekends.  Students are schedule for one session a day of 4-6 hours and are typically finished by 4 pm.

Medicine 1 Clerkship

Students observe the same days off as the Internal Medicine residents in order to maintain the integrity of the Medicine ward team, and for students to gain experience functioning on an inter-professional team,. Students get 1 in every 7 days off (typically either a Saturday or a Sunday along with their teams).

Students have the entire 4th weekend and 7th weekend off during the clerkship and will be excused by 5pm on Fridays of these weekends.

Neurology Clerkship

Students are expected to complete a one-day weekend shift, which is an 8-hour day shift from 8am-4pm. There is no overnight call at any site. All weekend shifts are done at BMC, except for the students rotating at the VA.

Ob/Gyn Clerkship

Students on the Ob/Gyn rotation will all rotate through inpatient gynecology, labor and delivery, and ambulatory clinics at all sites. These rotating sites of care allow some schedule flexibility and personalization. Schedules at all sites have enough flexibility that, if requested, students are able to get any specific weekend off and if needed, use one of the (two) personal days to extend to Friday or Monday.  Time off should be requested as per BUSM’s Time Off and Personal Days Policies. You will receive an email from the clerkship 4-6wks before the rotation begins and will need to MAKE SURE to reply promptly with your requests. It is not necessary to email the clerkship earlier than that. Offsite students make their schedules after arriving to the clerkship.

Pediatric Clerkship

Student schedules are site and location dependent for holidays outside of Thanksgiving, Intercession, and Spring Break. Students should not anticipate that they will have other holidays (e.g. Monday holidays) or the associated weekends off.

Weekends & Shift Work: Sites may have occasional weekend shifts.  This includes scheduled weekend coverage on the wards or weekend shifts in the Emergency Department.  Students may trade their weekend ward shifts with other medical students on their ward team if need be due to schedule conflicts. Similarly, students may trade ED shifts if their schedules allow them to do this without breaching work-hour or time-off between shifts limitations.  Students may not trade assigned clinics without permission.

Evening and Overnight Responsibilities: 

• Wards: On the BMC wards, students alternate evening admit “shifts,” which is an extended day that runs from morning until 9pm. Other sites may also have longer days to facilitate doing patient admissions – sometimes referred to colloquially as “call.” Occasionally, students may be assigned a week of overnight shifts on the wards.
• Emergency Department: In the ED student shifts are either morning or evening. Evening shifts typically end by 10pm.  Students will frequently have weekend shifts in the ED.
• Ambulatory Clinic: In the ambulatory clinic students may be assigned to clinics in any of the three sessions: 8am-12pm, 1-5pm, or 5-8pm. The evening shifts are scheduled to “end” at 8pm, but typically run until 9pm.  Students may cross-cover in the ED on the weekends or national/regional holidays not observed in the M3 schedule, but rarely have weekend clinic duties.
• Nursery: There are no evening responsibilities in the nursery, and typically no weekend responsibilities.

Psychiatry Clerkship

Student schedules are site and location dependent for holidays outside of Thanksgiving, Intercession, and Spring Break. Students do not have weekend hours.  Some sites have occasional evening hours.

Radiology Selective

Students take one 5-7pm evening shift during their radiology block. There is no overnight call or weekend responsibilities.

Surgery Clerkship

Students can generally expect to work an average of two weekend days per month, some of which will be overnight shifts seeing acute care surgery and trauma patients in the ER.  There is generally flexibility in the weekend schedule so that students can plan to be away for major events as needed.