Residency programs
General surgery residency programs scheduling software
This is written for general surgery residency program coordinators and chief residents. Scheduling here commonly runs into disputes over how q3/q4 call nights are distributed across a service's resident pool - the kind of problem a shared spreadsheet doesn't solve on its own. Below: the shift patterns programs like this typically use, and how RotaBay's generator handles the parts that create the most friction.
ACGME duty-hour floor
80-Hour Weekly Maximum §6.20.
Clinical and educational work hours (the modern term for what used to be called 'duty hours') must be limited to no more than 80 hours per week, averaged over a rolling four-week period. This includes all in-house clinical and educational activities, clinical work done from home, and all moonlighting (internal and external).
24-Hour Continuous Work Cap §6.22.
Clinical and educational work periods for residents must not exceed 24 hours of continuous scheduled clinical assignments. This is a Core (mandatory) requirement.
Applies to ACGME-accredited programs only; informational, not compliance advice.
Check a schedule against every ACGME duty-hour rule →Typical patterns
How this schedule is usually built
80-hour week, averaged over 4 weeks (ACGME)
SourcedGeneral surgery residents, like all ACGME-accredited trainees, are capped at 80 clinical and educational work hours per week, averaged over a rolling four-week period.
Source: acgme.orgTraditional q3 / q4 in-house call
Common patternSurgery programs, especially on trauma and acute-care services, have historically used an in-house call rotation where a resident takes overnight call roughly every third or fourth night.
Night float replacing traditional call
Common patternA growing number of programs have shifted trauma and general surgery services to a night-float model, with a dedicated overnight team covering Sunday through Thursday (or similar) rather than rotating every resident through 24-hour call.
24+4 continuous duty maximum
Common patternWhere in-house call is still used, ACGME limits continuous scheduled clinical work to 24 hours plus up to 4 additional hours for patient-safety handoff and transition activities.
Shift structure
A typical week's shift types
RotaBay
How RotaBay handles it
Disputes over how q3/q4 call nights are distributed across a service's resident pool
Fairness-weighted generation
Nights, weekends and holidays carry a higher fairness weight than a plain day shift, so the generator spreads the unpopular slots evenly across the group instead of always landing on the same few people.
Interns and junior residents feeling they absorb a disproportionate share of night-float weeks
Swap requests with an audit trail
When someone needs to trade a shift, they request it from the published page and it's applied with a full audit trail - no more chasing a manual spreadsheet edit at 11pm.
Last-minute OR-driven schedule changes that blow up a planned call rotation
Hard scheduling rules
Set a max on consecutive days and nights, block a day shift right after a night shift, and cap assignments per week - once. The generator enforces every rule on every run, so a pattern like clustering never slips past a busy scheduler.
FAQ
Common questions
It means a resident takes overnight in-house call roughly every third night in the rotation, a traditional call structure still used on some trauma and acute-care services.
Related specialties
A closer look at the pattern
A dedicated night shift covers weeknights while day teams work weekdays; weekend call covers the gap.
Generate a general surgery residency programs schedule free
Set your shifts and rules, RotaBay builds a fair, rule-compliant schedule in seconds - free to start, no card.