On-Call Policies for Neurology Clerkship

You will take call every 4th night.

You will not take call the final Thursday or Friday of the rotation. The shelf exam is on the final day of the rotation (Friday).

The overnight call room is in the Neurophysiology/EEG Lab, located on Tower 5D. Room 78 is the call room, which has a working shower. It is ok to use a normal Mass General Brigham computer while in the EEG Lab, but you are NOT to use any of the XLTEK EEG Monitoring computers. When you are done with the room, please remove the dirty linen and make the bed with clean linen. In other words, please leave the room as you found it.

DMD and ICU Service

Call is q4 overnight. When you are post-call, you are excused after you have rounded with the team and pending issues have been completed. You should leave by 1PM. You are expected to go to conferences and your primary care clinic. You will take call with the junior neurology resident on call. You will admit patients from the emergency room, scheduled direct admissions, or patients who are transferred from another hospital. On Friday and Saturday call nights, you will round with the team the following morning and leave after rounds and when pending issues have been completed. You should leave by 1PM at the latest. If there are no admissions (and you are not on call with a student on the consult service who has first priority for ED consults), you may also page the neurology resident covering the ED (31381) and see ED consults.

Consult Service

Call is q4 until 10 pm. You will work a full day post-call. Call is only until 10 pm to allow time to get home safely and get sleep. You will evaluate patients and have the opportunity to present cases to the attending on a near daily basis. When you are on call, you should alert the senior resident and the ED resident beeper to let them know you are on call and are ready to see new patients. Ideally, you will evaluate a patient who is going to be on the consult service, but call nights are also an opportunity for you to get experience doing ED neurology consults. On weekends or holidays you should join the team for morning rounds if on call or post-call. After rounding you can take call from home if you live in the area.

Night Call

Given the nature of neurological disease, bedside history and examination skills are particularly important for medical students to obtain during their neurology clerkship. In settings in which the experience is logistically feasible, night call offers a unique opportunity for continuity and hands-on guidance by neurology residents which may not be obtainable during normal business hours. For those students staying in the hospital overnight, every effort will be made to provide adequate sleep and work space.

When night call entails inadequate sleep, each student is responsible for choosing their optimal educational plan for the following day. Students are encouraged to leave after work rounds in order to sleep if they are too tired to benefit from afternoon activities, without any explicit or implicit penalization. However, they are welcome to attend afternoon educational activities if they feel this will benefit their educational experience. The Neurology Clerkship Committee recognizes students as adult learners who are best able to determine their optimal educational experience.

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