Hello,

I will be delivering my 1st child in the middle of PGY-1 year in medicine. My question is regarding maternity leave:

-- how much time do most residents take off?
-- do they have to use up their vacation first?
-- any other tips and suggestions, or experiences/stories to share?

Thank you!

congrats on your pregnancy! all residencies are a little different re maternity leave with different requirements and policies. your best bet would be to contact your program director asap and notify him/her of your pregnancy. asap is especially important since they will try and accommodate your pregnancy if they are aware in advance. this may mean scheduling elective months near your due date or at least easier rotations rather than ones with overnight call.

i know that surgery residencies have a maximum 6 weeks off for maternity leave including vacation time for that year. medicine may or may not be different. good luck!

I think most residency programs give you 6 weeks of maternity leave and let you use your vacation time in addition to that. Try to schedule electives during your last few months of pregnancy, if that allows you not to be on call as much. Hope that helps a bit.

Congratulations on your pregnancy. I had my first child at the beginning of my third year of residency. Most women in my class who had children took off 4-6 weeks. We were not allowed to use our vacation or schedule vacation right before or after maternity leave. Our female program director had some reasons I never quite understood. There are some important issues that you should be aware of before making a decision about how much or little time to take off. If you are gone more than six weeks most programs will make you delay your boards for a year. By law (Family Medical Leave Act) your program must allow you to take up to three months off. This is what I did. I was required to make it all up after the close of my third year. And, I was forced to delay taking my board exam until the following August. It essentially was of no negative consequence to me but could delay starting fellowship if that is something you are considering. One final thing, my program director did not make any of us aware that we could collect disability for the time we were off. I only learned this from a resident in another specialty. I was able to collect some retroactively about six months later. All things to consider. Good luck with your decision. I am thankful for the time I had with my son and would not change a thing.

My program specifically says in it's resident handbook that vacation time must be used. Which I think is ridiculous. for a total of 6 weeks, we have to use 3 weeks from that year and 3 weeks vacation from the following year. That's IF you didn't already use the vacation for that year. If you did already use your vacation time, they stop your pay. At least that was my interpretation. I'm fuming just thinking about it.
I think eligibility for state funds like unemployment/disability vary state to state.

I have recently been trying to find this out myself since we are considering going for kiddo #1 during residency. What I have come across is that, as stated in another post, you must be allowed 12 weeks off (unpaid) by the family medical leave act. Your program can decide whether to include your vacation time as part of this or not. However, you will have to make up the missed time at the end of your residency. I personally would try to get as much time off as possible and just take the extra few weeks at the end, even if it meant delaying boards as well. I suppose this all varies by type of program though, and I know that pediatrics is likely the most flexible...some places allow you to take 6 months off and make this time up later on.
I'd love to hear from other people about maternity leave policies-- anyone familiar with how this generally works in emergency medicine?

Congratulations!

I also recently looked into this as I am expecting twins later this year. Most women in my program take 3 to 6 weeks off for maternity leave. We get 2 weeks of paid maternity leave and 4 weeks of paid vacation per year. Yes, FMLA allows 12 weeks of maternity leave, but it doesn't all have to be paid. If missing your salary for a month or two isn't a big deal, then you can take up to 12 weeks maternity leave, and they cannot dismiss you from your residency program. Of course, you will need to make up time missed at the end of your residency.

Disability benefits differ from state to state and also depending on what kind of medical center you work for. The University medical center here is part of the state, so they don't pay into state disability, and thus, I cannot get disability benefits.

You have to work somewhere for at least a year before you can qualify for FMLA. Also, be prepared to fight for the FMLA--I did. Just remember, you are not a "student", you are employeed.

Good Luck1

Piggy backing on this topic, what have others done during residency when there have been pregnancy complications? ie.- doctor's orders for bed rest, prolonged recovery from child birth, etc? I've read over my contract and it specifies 3 weeks vacation and 3 weeks sick leave will be used for paid maternity leave but anything in excess will be unpaid. As if being paid on a residence salary, like that is going to cut it?

I just graduated from medical school and am expecting my first baby any day now. My prelim medicine program, which starts July 1st, has me using my vacation and floating holidays - 4 weeks - as my "pseudo-maternity" leave. I do not really qualify for maternity leave because the 1 year program requires that I am physically in the hospital for a certain number of days. If I took more time off, I would have to delay my graduation from that program and subsequently my continuation into my anesthesia program. I told the program the minute I matched and sat down with the director to discuss options. I recommend doing this as the program may have certain rules on how they deal with "maternity" leave.