Residency Requirements – Changes to Activity Weeks

Dear Colleagues,

I’d like to provide you with an update from the Resident Credentialing Committee. The Board of Regents has recently approved our recommended changes to the number and type of Activity weeks required for ACVS residents whose programs start July 1, 2013 or later. The catalyst for these changes was the Diplomate survey conducted in 2010. The respondents to that survey requested increased private practice/clinical practice time, preservation of flexibility within the program, and modification of the requirements for training in other specialties (Imaging, Medicine, etc.). The RCC aimed to address these Diplomate responses and shift the residency program requirements in parallel with the evolution of current veterinary surgical practice. 

The total number of weeks has not changed, of course – still 156 weeks in a residency. The main change is a shift from 94 weeks of Diplomate supervised surgical rotations to 110 weeks, which represents a 10% increase (from 60% of total time to 70%). A sampling of recent residents indicates that the higher requirement for surgery weeks is already occurring –logs show an average of 113 weeks of supervised surgical rotations. 

With regard to non-surgical activity, up to now, the nebulously named “Special Rotations” category has encompassed everything that wasn’t a clinical surgery rotation and a total of 31 weeks was required. We have separated that category into more specific components: 18 weeks are now allocated specifically to Research/Manuscript Preparation, and the same 8 weeks (in total) are required for training in Other Specialties. The remaining 20 weeks are left to the program’s discretion – often referred to as “Program Choice”. This amount represents 13% of the total residency, down from 20% (31 weeks) previously. Continuing education activities, which are not research or manuscript preparation, now fall into this block of weeks. For the Other Specialties weeks, Internal Medicine training may now take place in either general medicine or any medicine subspecialty (neurology, cardiology, critical care). Full, continuous weeks must be completed for Medicine and Anesthesia, but Pathology and Diagnostic Imaging may be completed on either an hourly or a weekly basis. Please see the table below for an overview of the restructuring. This information will be included in the 2013-2014 Residency Program Guidelines, which will be available next spring.

I hope you’ll agree that these changes are a slight reshuffling rather than a major overhaul, and should not be an onerous transition for residents or programs. The restructure results in more surgical experience for our residents while ensuring dedicated time for Research/Manuscript activities, and also provides more flexibility in the Other Specialties requirements. Bear with us as you see these new category names appear in the online logs – we will endeavor to make it as transparent as possible.

Best regards,

Jamie Textor, DVM, DACVS
Chair, Resident Credentialing Committee