Electronic submission of resident work hours: a convenient way of exchange of information

The purpose of this protocol is to assess how residents can document their work hours in a convenient and objective way; to find an efficient, secure, quick, and reproducible way of communication between house staff and residency administrators regarding work hours data; and to fulfill the requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and other monitoring bodies regarding work hours documentation. This electronic work hours submission protocol is based on the Microsoft Excel system. The data is submitted via e-mail to the residency coordinators. The work hours sheet recognizes the time spent by the residents in various categories such as patient care, off hours, off days, vacations, outpatient clinic time, on-site rest time, and education time. Calculations are done automatically in the work sheet and results are shown graphically. We found electronic submission of work hours as a more convenient, secure, objective, efficient, and reproducible way of communication than the paper submission forms. Each resident can now easily be tracked for the time he/she spends in various categories. The data will be used to assess how more efficiently residents can spend their time. It also fulfills the documentation requirements of different monitoring bodies.