Moonlighting Policy

Moonlighting Policy

All residents wishing to moonlight must obtain written permission from the Program Director. The Program Director will acknowledge his awareness of the resident's activities in writing by counter-signing this form. The number of hours spent moonlighting cannot exceed the 80-hour limit established by the ACGME.  The request to moonlight must include a statement including why moonlighting is being requested as well as the location, duties, and schedule of the resident's proposed moonlighting.  The resident must assure that moonlighting will not interfere with his/her training rotation.

Residents who demonstrate financial need may moonlight during their non-neurosurgical (non-clinical) rotations to meet their needs.  The Program Director will determine the merits of the special consideration request. All clinical rotations at UCLA, Harbor, the VA, and Santa Monica-UCLA are not allowed for obvious reasons. 

Postgraduate training is demanding in time both at UCLA and for independent study.  We do not encourage moonlighting but acknowledge the need as long as it does not interfere with your education, participation in the program, or patient care.

The potential for abuse of moonlighting privileges is well recognized.  Guidelines for regulating moonlighting activity are as follows: 1) any resident found to be performing at an unsatisfactory level at the time of each six-month resident review may not moonlight; and 2) each resident will submit a signed statement each month tabulating the days spent moonlighting; and, 3) any resident found to be abusing the moonlighting privilege will be placed on probation and the privilege of ALL residents to moonlight will be revoked.  Because the privilege to moonlight is needed by many of the resident staff, the residents will assume the primary responsibility in overseeing the activities of their colleagues to prevent abuses that would endanger future moonlighting.

Participation in outside employment may be allowed during assignment to the research hiatus.  Formal approval for such activities must be obtained from the Program Director and the research mentor or principal investigator.  Any residents not in good academic standing with the program will not be allowed to participate in
moonlighting activities until being reinstated to good standing.

Moonlighting residents must continue to fulfill the one paper per year minimum training participation requirement and have performed exceptionally on the ABNS primary exam.  *R3-50th percentile, R4-70th percentile.

Violation of this policy may result in immediate dismissal from the training program