Read: For women, a complicated pregnancy can sometimes delay completing a reside
ID: 238796 • Letter: R
Question
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For women, a complicated pregnancy can sometimes delay completing a residency. There are no time limits for how long it takes you to complete a surgical residency, although the American Board of Surgery does require that you complete 96 weeks of clinical work in your last two years of training. "Time off" for extenuating circumstances (whether they be pregnancy or other illness related) are usually resolved with your program director. Because of difficulty anticipating one's schedule, some surgical residents decide that the best time to start a family is after residency training is complete. Some women find that the years spent in research during or after their residency offer them a far more accommodating schedule to begin a family. However, if you decide that you are going to combine surgical residency training with raising a family, get ready to become very organized. Finding excellent child care services in the home or through a day care facility will be a great challenge for you and your spouse, just as it is for all working parents. So plan ahead. You also need to plan for backup support. Children in day care do get sick and are sent home. Day care practitioners will generally not adjust their policies on calling a parent at work to pick up a sick child based on what the parent does for a living. Many medical centers now have on-site day care with extended hours that are more accommodating to surgical residents' work schedules. If you are interviewing for a residency position and you are planning for parenthood during the residency years, it is legal to ask if a program has a pregnancy policy (although you are better off to ask the residents this). Don't expect a residency program to rearrange the whole schedule to accommodate your pregnancy, and remember (legally) no program can dismiss you solely for becoming pregnant. Once you are in a residency training program, if you get pregnant, let your program director know about your situation as soon as possible. That way it will be easier for all parties involved to make accommodations for a pregnancy during residency training. Surprises make accommodation more difficult. You might also ask your colleagues (or the residents who have been in the program for awhile) for their perspective on how the administration deals with pregnancy issues to prepare yourself for any type of reported scenario.
Question:
When inquiring about issues of pregnancy for a given surgical residency program, it is best to talk to:
a. the residence director
b. current residents
Explanation / Answer
Ans.b. current residents
It is given in the passage that residents who have been in the program for a while can be helpful to be inquired about how the administration deals with pregnancy issues while the women are asked to approach program directer only to give information about the current situation in case they get pregnant .
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