Medical Student Duty Hours

VP&S Work Hours Policy 

Overview/Rationale 

VP&S (Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons) is responsible for monitoring the amount of time medical students spend in required educational activities across the curriculum. Faculty must provide curriculum that supports student learning through planned educational activities, fosters self-directed learning, and protects student personal health and well-being. Faculty need clear guidelines for determining a schedule of educational activities based on data, student input, and sound pedagogical principles.  

This policy outlines expectations for student workload in the pre-clerkship and clinical phases of the curriculum, including expectations for time spent on scheduled and unscheduled required educational activities.  

Accreditation Standards 

• LCME Accreditation Standard: 8.8 Monitoring Student Time 
• LCME Accreditation Standard 6.3: Self-Directed and Life-long Learning 

Stakeholders 

• Medical students and Faculty 
• The clinical phase policy and procedures applies to medical students both at CUIMC (Columbia University Irving Medical Center) and its affiliate sites. 

Policy 

Fundamentals Phase 

1. The total student workload in the fundamentals phase curriculum should not exceed on average 60 hours per week. 
2. The overall workload per week is calculated based on the total hours of scheduled in-class activities and out-of-class required activities. 
3. In-class scheduled activities include lectures, large group sessions, small group sessions, review sessions, labs, clinical experiences, and assessments. They do not include optional office hours.  
4. Out-of-class required activities include assigned readings, write-ups and other written assignments, online modules, and weekly synthesis/assessment questions. These out-of-class required activities do not include time spent on regular study or review of material. 
5. In the fundamentals phase curriculum, students are to have two afternoons free of scheduled required educational activities per week so that they may spend time on self-directed learning. Given that some courses teach sections of the class on different afternoons, there will not be free periods for the class en bloc. 
6. Students in good academic standing may take additional courses outside of the required curriculum or participate in enrichment experiences. These hours do not count towards weekly workload limits. Students must receive approval from the Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Support and Services to register for university courses outside of the required VP&S curriculum.  

Clinical Phase (MCY and D&I Phases):

1. The student duty hour guidelines will be communicated to students and supervising physicians (including residents, fellows and faculty) in writing and to students at each clerkship orientation. 
2. If a student is concerned about a violation of the work hours policy at a site, the student can report this on the end-of-clerkship evaluation form, and/or use this Learning Environment/Duty Hours Qualtrics online survey form to confidentially or not confidentially report work hours violations. 
3. All reports of work hour violations including concerns about on-call issues are immediately communicated to the relevant Clerkship Director and the Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs, who will work together to address the violation. For non-anonymous work hour violations, the clerkship director will alter the student’s schedule to bring the student’s work hours into compliance, where possible. For issues identified after the clerkship, the clerkship director will gather information and propose a response plan for approval to the Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs. 
4. The MCY/D&I subcommittee and CEPC will review summary work hour survey responses and violation reports at least annually with more regular urgent follow up occurring as needed. 

Policy History/ Approval Date:  

The policy on scheduling in the Fundamentals curriculum and clinical duty hours policy was taken from print-version student handbooks and online formats.  These documents were reformatted and codified into policy where specific procedures and edits were added.  The policy was reviewed and approved by the Committee on Educational Policy and Curriculum on April 19, 2024.