An Innovative Approach to Resident Scheduling: Use of a Point-Based System to Account for Resident Preferences

The scheduling of residents for rotation assignments and on-call responsibilities is a time-consuming process that challenges the resources of residency programs. Assignment of schedules is traditionally done by chief residents or program administration with variable input from the residents involved.

We introduced an innovative point-based scheduling system to increase transparency in the scheduling process, foster a sense of fairness and equality in scheduling, and increase resident ownership for making judicious scheduling choices.

We devised a point-based system in which each resident in our 40-member program was allocated an equal number of points. The residents assigned these points to their preferred choices of rotations. Residents were then surveyed anonymously on their perceptions of this new scheduling system and were asked to compare it with their traditional scheduling system.

The schedule was successfully implemented, and it allowed residents to express their scheduling preferences using an innovative point-based approach. Residents were generally satisfied with the new system, would recommend it to other programs, and perceived a greater sense of involvement. However, resident satisfaction with the new system was not significantly greater compared with the previous approach to scheduling (P = .20). Chief residents expressed satisfaction with the new scheduling model.

Residents were equally satisfied with the traditional preference-based scheduling approach and the new point-based system. Chief residents' feedback on the new system reflected reduced stress and time commitment in the new point-based system.