The Medical Resident Scheduling Tool

Schedule Maker's Guide

Manage Off Requests

The ability to track off requests for your medical residents is a key capability of the MedRez.net Scheduling Tool. Let’s have a look at how it’s done.

Off Requests can be seen in context from within Annual Rotations Schedules and Call/Shift Schedules, but the main page to see all requests is the Requests tab in the Staffs Section.

The grid shows you each resident’s number of days granted versus days denied. For any resident you can click “requests” to see a list of requests.

Counting Days

Requests are tallied as number of days. Five one-day requests is the same as one five-day request. Partial days are counted as a decimal: 0.5 days for a 12-hour request.

The “All requests” / “Selected year only” dropdown at the top of the grid changes which requests are counted:

  • “All requests”: Every request is counted, regardless of the request date.
  • “Selected year only”: A request is counted if it takes place during the selected year.

Some additional details about counting “Selected Year Only” requests:

  • The year starts and ends on the Academic Year Start Day.
  • If a request partially overlaps an academic year the system only counts the days that overlap. This prevents double-counting requests that overlap two years.

Request Categories and Types

There are two main types of requests: “Day-Off” and “Leave/Vacation”. These behave slightly differently depending on the kind of schedule you are making:

  • In Annual Rotations Schedules only “Leave/Vacation” type requests are shown and considered for conflicts.
  • In Call/Shift Schedules “Day-Off” type requests are considered and will conflict with shifts and calls.
  • In Call/Shift Schedules “Leave/Vacation” type requests behave the same as “Day Off” requests, except they change the calculations of duty-hour rules. If a resident is on a “Leave/Vacation” they are not considered to be on the schedule, and therefore any duty hour rule that considers time on schedule will be affected. See Duty Hours page.

Request Categories

Request categories let you track requests in a more granular way.

You can create custom categories to suit your needs. To do so visit the Settings tab in the Resident/Staffs section.

For each category you create you can specify whether requests in that category are “Day-Off” or “Leave/Vacation” types.

Granted / Denied: Off Request Status

A request that has been entered in the system can be in one of two states:

  • Granted
  • Denied

A “granted” request is one that the schedule maker thinks they will be able to honor. A “denied” request is one that simply could not be accommodated.

If a granted request conflicts with a rotation or a shift or call in a schedule, the schedule editing screen will show this conflict clearly. See below:

In the above image two granted requests are shown in an Annual Rotations Schedule. The “Elective” rotation allows vacations and therefore does not conflict with the request. However the “Surgery” rotation does not allow requests, therefore it’s a conflict and it shows up in red along with an exclamation mark in the rotation.

If that request is changed to “denied”, the warning goes away and the request turns grey to indicate it’s OK to ignore it. See below:

A similar warning system exists for Call/Shifts Schedules:

Change the Status

You change the status of a request in any resident listing:

Click the “Grant” and “Deny” buttons to change the status. See below for the meaning of “Hide status” and “Publish status”.

Publish Status

In addition to being granted or denied, each request has a “Publish status”. This status only exists when publishing is enabled on your account.

The publish status of a request is one of:

  • “Under Consideration”
  • “Published”

“Under Consideration” means that the request is visible in the Schedule Viewer but is labeled as “Under Consideration” instead of granted or denied. “Under Consideration” gives the schedule maker time to work on a schedule without committing one way or another that the request will be honored.

Once a request “Publish Status” is set to “Published”, then its actual status appears in the Schedule Viewer: either granted or denied.

Requests that overlap a schedule are automatically set to “Published” when that schedule is published.

Let Residents and Staff Enter Requests Online

The MedRez.net Scheduling Tool lets you gather requests entered through the MedRez.net Schedule Viewer by your residents and staff. For more information visit the Online Requests page.

Next page: Duty Hour Rules

Making schedules that respect duty hour rules is a key capability of the MedRez.net Scheduling Tool.