Daily Schedule and rotations
The Universidad [Blinded for review] Residency is a 3-year program, currently including five residents per year, divided in four teaching hospitals in Santiago, Chile. In the COVID-19 pandemic, where limiting the exposure of healthcare professionals and maintaining the quality of attention to patients is the top priority, our Department implemented the following measures: optimal use of PPE according to aerosols generation risk; cancellation of all elective rotations outside the Otolaryngology Department; voluntary quarantine for residents with chronic pulmonary disease, pregnancy and immunosuppression; division of the available residents into “7 days on” and “14 days off” shift schedules, with everyday monitoring of respiratory symptoms appearance. Unfortunately, this resulted in a decrease of the overall procedures and surgeries performed by the residents over a month, as seen inTable 2 .
Finally, by the university’s Postgraduate Committee order, all annual evaluations were suspended for at least 3 months.