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The Medical Resident Scheduling Tool

Schedule Maker's Guide

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Schedules and the Academic Year

An important aspect of the Scheduling Tool is that it breaks schedules up into academic years.

Most US residencies start the year on or around July 1, and MedRez.net defaults to that day as the start of the year. (You can change the first day of the year on your account, see below.)

Schedule Years

Each schedule is associated with one academic year, such as 2020-2021. The academic year of the Schedule is set when the schedule is first created.

The academic year is an important parameter because it determines what PGY the residents are when they participate in this schedule. Read more about resident years here.

Note:

Block dates of schedules must fall within the academic year. However there is some leniency built into the system that allows you to create a block that starts or ends a few days outside the academic year, as real world residency scheduling often involves shifted block dates for some medical residents.

In the image below you can see that the “Intern Blocks” end after the end of the academic year for the Annual Rotations Schedule. This is fine and expected.

Academic Year Start Day

The default, and in most cases correct setting is “July 1”. This is typical for most medical residencies.

Outside of schedules the Scheduling Tool uses the current year to determine how to display the PGY / level of each resident. This is done by comparing today’s date with the first day of the academic year.

Changing the start day

To change the first day of your academic year follow these steps:

  • go to your account’s Home page.
  • click on “Settings” link in the top right part of the page to access the “Academic Year” setting.

To change the start day of your academic year click the “change” link.

Note:

Your program might start some residents on July 1 and others (typically PGY-1s or interns) a few days later. In that case pick the date that represents the most common start day.

Changing the first day of the year has the following impact:

  • Changes the day on which you will see your residents advance from PGY-3 to PGY-4 in any part of the program that is not directly related to a Schedule.
  • Changes the range of dates available in a schedule’s Blocks tab.

Changing the first day of the year will not change the academic year of your Schedules.

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