Weekend Call and Grossing Responsibilities

For the first several months of AP training, after-hours call responsibilities are restricted to early evening hours (5:30-9:30 pm) on the Frozen Section day of the 4-day Surg Path cycle; in the Fall, PGY1s begin handling overnight AP issues under the direct supervision of a senior trainee or faculty member.  In total, this results in ~30 individual AP overnight calls over the course of the year. Trainees can also expect to gross on Saturdays 5-6 times during their PGY1 year, and will have a PA or senior resident present on-site for assistance and oversight.

PGY2 AP/CP and PGY1 CP-only assume CP overnight and weekend call responsibilities in the fall of their second year.  CP call is scheduled week-by-week, and is typically home call with very rare exceptions (such as urgent blood smear reviews for possible Malarial organisms).  Overall, trainees can expect to take call every 4-6 weeks during their PGY2 year.   The on-call trainee is also expected to come in every Saturday to preview wet heme cases; this amounts to 8-10 Saturdays per year.

PGY2 AP-only and PGY3 AP/CP trainees support their PGY1 colleagues by covering overnight AP call after 9:30pm for the first several months of the year; in addition, they cover overnight call on their own Frozen section days while on surgical pathology.  This leads to a total of ~35 individual call nights over the course of the year.  Additionally, they can expect to gross 4-5 Saturdays out of the year.

PGY4 AP/CP trainees complete their CP call responsibilities during the first months of the year, typically covering 2 weeks of CP call between July and September.  During the fall, PGY3 AP-only and PGY4 AP/CP trainees receive a series of faculty-led frozen section preparedness slide sessions which culminate with taking overnight frozen section call with faculty oversight: an important opportunity to develop a sense of diagnostic autonomy with a safety net in place.  PGY4 trainees can expect to cover frozen section call for ~6 weeks of their final year of training, and many consider this to be among the most formative experiences of their training.