Every rule, number, and step this app actually runs — not a summary. Open a question below.
This documents the app's real, coded behavior — the exact day counts, caps, and escalation timing — not a paraphrase of the program manual. If a number here ever looks off, it's the app that's wrong; tell the program office via the 🐞 link in the footer.
The big picture
What actually happens, start to finish, when I submit a request?
- You pick dates, leave type, (if PGY-2+) a therapy-coverage resident, and confirm which attendings to ask.
- The policy check runs. A hard violation (over your vacation/educational allowance) blocks submission outright. Everything else is a warning you can submit through, sometimes after checking an "exception" box with a written reason.
- The request is created as pending. Covering residents and your therapy-coverage pick (if any) get informational emails immediately — no action needed from them except the therapy-coverage confirm.
- Every affected attending gets an approval email with one-click Approve/Deny buttons, no login required. WrightLeave chases non-responders automatically (see the escalation section below).
- Once attendings clear the approval threshold and therapy coverage (if required) is confirmed, the request becomes documentation complete — still not approved. Everything, including a filled copy of the official leave-request PDF, is emailed to the program office coordinator.
- The coordinator clicks Pre-approve to finalize it. Only then does your status flip to approved, and only then do you get the "approved" email plus your own signed PDF copy.
If any attending denies at any point, the request goes straight to denied and the chase stops immediately — no need to wait out the rest of the ladder.
Does an attending's "Approve" mean my leave is granted?
No. Attending sign-off (plus therapy-coverage confirmation, if you're PGY-2+) only gets the request to "documentation complete." The request sits in the coordinator's queue until they click Pre-approve — that's the only action that sets status to approved and releases your signed leave-form PDF. This matches the program's policy that the Director/coordinator has final say.
Leave types & your annual allowance
How many days of each leave type do I get, and do they carry over?
| Type | Allowance / year | Enforcement |
|---|
| Vacation | R1 (PGY-1): 10 working days
R2–R4: 15 working days | Hard cap — submission is blocked if it would put you over |
| Educational | 5 working days | Hard cap — blocked over |
| Sick | 15 working days | Tracked, never blocked — just a warning past 15 |
| Personal | Up to 5 working days | Tracked, never blocked — just a warning past 5 |
| Parental | No fixed day cap | Handled as an administrative/FMLA multi-week block; the 25% and inpatient rotation caps don't apply to it |
None of these carry over. The allowance resets every academic year (July 1 – June 30), counted by which academic year your start date falls in. Unused vacation at June 30 is simply gone.
How does WrightLeave count "days"?
Every day count in this app — your allowance, what a request uses, the 25% rule — is Monday–Friday working days only, counted inclusively across your start and end date. Weekends inside your leave span aren't counted against any allowance, even though you're calendar-away for them. A single weekday off is 1 working day; a Friday–Monday span is 2 working days (the weekend is free).
Rules that can block a request vs. rules that only warn
What's the difference between a "block" and a "warning"?
Only one thing in the entire policy engine actually prevents submission: requesting more vacation or educational days than you have remaining in the academic year. Everything else below is advisory — the request still submits, sometimes gated behind a written "exception" explanation.
What are the exact blackout dates for vacation?
No vacation is normally granted June 17–30 or July 1–14 (the two-week windows on either side of the academic-year switch). Requesting vacation touching any of those calendar days marks the request as needing a written exception — you must check the exception box and type an explanation before you can submit.
Is there a rule for PGY-1s on internal medicine or neurology?
Yes — if you're PGY-1 and the affected service matches "internal medicine" or "neurology," requesting vacation triggers a warning that vacation is generally restricted during those rotations. It doesn't block submission, but flags it for the attending/coordinator.
What's the "25% of a rotation" rule?
For each 4-week rotation block your request touches, WrightLeave adds up all your leave of any type already on the books plus this request, within that block. A 4-week block has roughly 20 working days, so the cap is floor(block working days × 0.25) — typically 5 working days. Going over triggers a warning that the rotation may not receive credit, which can extend training. This is a warning, not a block, but it's the one most likely to actually matter for your training timeline.
What's the inpatient-rotation cap?
If the affected service name contains "inpatient" or "inpt," combined vacation + educational leave in that rotation block can't exceed 10 working days (sick and personal don't count toward this specific cap). Over that triggers a warning naming the exact total for that block.
How much advance notice do I actually need to give?
Vacation and educational requests warn if there are fewer than 30 days between today and your start date. The warning text also mentions a 45-day expectation for the VA Mental Health clinic specifically — but be aware the app's actual check is a flat 30-day threshold for every service; it does not computationally distinguish a VA rotation and apply 45 instead. Sick and personal leave have no notice requirement (they're same-day self-log entries; see below).
What are the "combined leave" caps the Director can act on?
Two advisory triggers, summing every leave type together: more than 30 working days (6 weeks) in one academic year, or more than 120 working days (24 weeks) across all four years of residency. Crossing either produces a warning noting the Director of Residency Training may require extending your training — it's their call, not an automatic block.
Filling out the request (Steps 1–4)
What are the 4 steps on the "New request" form?
- Dates — a visual calendar showing your own rotation, or a "Quick pick" pair of date fields. You can set a return date different from "next weekday after the last day off."
- Type of leave — Vacation, Educational, Sick, Personal, or Parental.
- Long-term psychotherapy coverage — only shown for PGY-2+ residents (see below).
- Attendings to ask — WrightLeave pre-fills the attendings it thinks are affected (see next question); you can uncheck one who shouldn't be asked (e.g., they're away too) or add someone extra via "Add another attending."
How does WrightLeave know which attendings and residents to contact?
It reads the uploaded schedule for every day in your requested range:
- R2 (and legacy) residents: your assignment comes from your own daily schedule rows.
- R3 residents (and R4, using whichever half-year template applies): a weekly recurring template is resolved by day-of-week rather than daily rows. If any of those days lands at the VA, your designated VA supervisor is automatically added to the ask.
- Any attending whose roster-listed services match your resolved rotation(s) for those dates is added as an approver. Spelling variants across sheets (e.g. "MVH Inpatient" vs. "Inpt MVH") are canonicalized so they still match correctly.
- Other residents sharing your service in that window become covering residents (informational — they don't approve anything, just get a heads-up).
- Residents already scheduled off during your window are shown separately as a coverage conflict flag, not asked to cover.
If literally no attending is found for the window (e.g. you're R4 with no scheduled supervisor), you must add one manually in Step 5 — submission is blocked without at least one approver.
The approval chase — exact timing
Exactly how many emails does an attending get, and how far apart?
The first approval email goes out immediately. By default each attending gets up to 3 total emails (the original request + 2 reminders), spaced 2 days apart — both numbers are admin-adjustable in Settings → Workflow settings. Every email carries one-click Approve/Deny links; no attending login is required.
If automatic attending texts are enabled, an attending who has opted in also gets one SMS at about noon on the next business day while the request is still pending. Admins can turn this off, change the hour, or send another next-business-day SMS after each later reminder email. An attending who has not opted in stays email-only.
The resident's 📲 Text them button is separate: it opens a ready-written message in the resident's own phone and can be used immediately. WrightLeave never sends that manual message for them.
What happens if attendings never respond?
Two more stages kick in automatically, using default settings as an example:
- Stage 1 (once every attending's email allotment is exhausted — day ~4 by default): you get emailed with each unresponsive attending's phone number and a short, forwardable one-click approval link, so you can nudge them directly by text or call. This resident-sent message is available even if automatic SMS is turned off.
- Stage 2 (one more reminder-interval after the nudge — day ~6 by default): if still nothing, the coordinator is automatically flagged with everything collected so far and can approve on your behalf from the Requests tab ("Pre-approve").
These stage timings scale with whatever "days between escalation emails" is set to — they aren't separately configurable.
Do I need every attending to approve, or just one?
Admin-configurable, program-wide (not per-request): "All affected attendings must approve" (the default) or "One attending approval is sufficient." Check Setup → Workflow settings to see which is active.
What if an attending denies?
The whole request goes to denied immediately — the chase for other attendings stops right away, it doesn't wait for everyone to respond. Denying now requires the attending to explain why on the next page — the denial isn't even recorded until they submit a reason. That reason is emailed to you (and shown on your dashboard) as part of the same "not approved" notification — it's not sent to the coordinator; that's between you and the attending.
Is there a manual "verbal confirmation" fallback?
Only if the coordinator explicitly opens that door for your specific request (typically after the email chase has stalled) — you can't self-trigger it. Once opened, you can log "I got verbal confirmation," naming who confirmed and an optional note. This records the confirmation for the coordinator to verify and finalize; it does not auto-approve the request by itself.
Sick, personal & therapy coverage
How are sick and personal days different from vacation/educational?
Completely different path — picking Sick or Personal in Step 2 skips the attending-approval machinery entirely. It's recorded immediately with status logged (not "pending"), counts against your yearly balance right away, and just sends the program office an FYI email — no approvals, no escalation ladder, no coordinator sign-off needed.
Important: logging a sick/personal day here only notifies the program office. It does not reach your clinical site/team that day — you still have to call or message them yourself so they can arrange coverage. (Active-duty military residents: this also doesn't substitute for being placed "on quarters" through WP Medical Center if you can't perform duties — that's a separate, required step.)
What's the long-term psychotherapy coverage step, and who has to do it?
It only appears for residents who are PGY-2 or above (interns don't carry continuity therapy patients). You pick a fellow resident in Step 3; they get an emailed Confirm/Can't-cover link. Your leave cannot reach "documentation complete" — and therefore cannot be finalized — until that person confirms, even if every attending has already approved. If they decline, you have to pick someone else, which re-sends the confirmation request.
The covering resident is explicitly asked — in their initial email, and again on the confirmation page once they accept — to reach out to you directly (call, text, or in person) before you leave, so they actually know the patients rather than just being on record as "covering." Your own confirmation email carries the same reminder back the other way — don't wait on them to reach out first.
What's the "Message coverage" step, and why is it different from "who covers your service"?
It only appears for R3/R4 residents on outpatient continuity clinics (Access/VA/WP/CLINIC — the weekly-template schedule). On those rotations your patients simply aren't scheduled on the days you're away, so the ordinary "who covers your clinical service" mechanism (built for R1/R2 inpatient rotations, where a peer on the same service literally takes over patient care) doesn't apply — what actually needs covering is your Genesis (EHR) inbox messages. Pick a covering resident in Step 4; they get an emailed heads-up (informational, no confirmation required) so they know to check your inbox while you're out.
Do I need to give my attendings/supervisors a heads-up beyond the app approval?
Yes — WrightLeave's approval is not a substitute for the normal courtesy of telling people in person. As the dates get closer, give your attending(s) and/or supervisors a respectful verbal reminder of your leave; this is expected of every resident, even after the form is approved. The app repeats this reminder for you automatically in the "attendings signed off, awaiting final sign-off" email and again in the final approval email, so it's hard to miss.
🎖️ Active-duty military residents
Does WrightLeave's approval cover military leave procedures too?
No — active-duty leave must ALSO be coordinated with USAF leadership, separately from and in addition to the WrightLeave approval flow. Per the program manual, the designated USAF Associate Training Director should be your point of contact for all leave. Getting attending sign-off and program-office final approval in this app does not substitute for that military-channel coordination — do both.
How does the app know I'm active-duty, and what does it do about it?
An admin (the program office) marks active-duty residents in Setup → Admin tab → "Active-duty military residents." Once you're flagged, WrightLeave automatically adds a 🎖️ reminder — about coordinating with USAF leadership through your Associate Training Director — to (1) an in-app callout on the New request screen as soon as you pick dates, (2) your "attendings signed off, awaiting final sign-off" email, and (3) your final "leave APPROVED" email. The coordinator finalizing your request also sees a one-line flag that you're active-duty, so they know military coordination applies. Because your leave must also be approved through LeaveWeb by Col Baker, WrightLeave holds your completed paperwork from going to the program office for final sign-off until you confirm LeaveWeb approved it — so the two approvals stay in sync.
🏥 VA outpatient leave (R3s)
I'm an R3 taking leave that touches a VA outpatient day — what else do I need to do?
Per VA orientation, there are 4 steps beyond just getting WrightLeave approval — and if your leave request's detected service includes VA outpatient and you're PGY-3, WrightLeave now reminds you of all four automatically (in-app on the New request screen, and again in your docs-complete and approved emails):
- Request it early. Ask as far in advance as you can — anything under 45 days' notice is "less than ideal" for the clinic's scheduling/logistics. (Note: this is separate advice from — and stricter than — the app's general 30-day policy warning for vacation/educational leave; follow the 45-day guidance for VA outpatient specifically.)
- Tell the right people. Notify your supervisor as soon as you know the dates, and call the VA outpatient clinic directly at 937-268-6511 ext 1858 with the details of your leave so your template and patient visits can be handled and the team/block schedule adjusted early.
- Submit the formal leave paperwork. A LEAF form is required — this is the formal step, not just a heads-up to your supervisor.
- Plan message coverage while you're out. In PowerChart, don't assign your supervisor as your proxy. You're expected to cover your own messages, or arrange for a peer to manage them while you're on leave.
🪖 Base (WPAFB) leave (R3s)
I'm an R3 taking a day off at the Base — what else is expected beyond WrightLeave approval?
If your leave request's detected service is the Base ("WP") and you're PGY-3, WrightLeave now adds this checklist automatically — in-app on the New request screen, and again in your docs-complete and approved emails:
- Plan well in advance. Appointments book 1–3 months out; last-minute leave can push patients back months.
- Submit leave the right way. A Genesis T-con to the BH Tech messaging pool — not the scheduling pool — with your supervisor CC'd.
- Verify your schedule is actually blocked before you depart. Don't assume open slots will just stay unfilled.
- Clearly identify a coverage person. Don't rely on diffusion of responsibility — name someone specific.
- ARDL patients: if you'll be away on a Tuesday, arrange for a colleague to present on your behalf, and complete the ARDL note within 24 hours (paste the prior note and update it).
- Holiday leave (especially November–December): project it early, and make sure your office partner isn't out at the same time.
Amending, cancelling & what re-triggers approvals
If I edit my request, does it re-ask the attendings and reset everything?
Only if you change the dates or the set of attendings being asked. That reopens the request to "pending," wipes prior sign-offs, and sends a completely fresh round of approval emails (full ladder resets to step 0).
Editing only the reason, return date, or swapping your therapy-coverage resident (without changing dates) leaves existing attending approvals standing — nobody is re-emailed for approval, though the coordinator and resident both get an "amended" notice summarizing exactly what changed.
What happens when I cancel/withdraw a request?
It's marked cancelled immediately, all pending escalation stops, and everyone previously looped in — attendings, covering residents, your therapy-coverage pick, and the coordinator — gets a withdrawal email so nobody keeps chasing a dead request.
Can I amend a request that was already denied or cancelled?
No — amend is blocked once status is denied or cancelled. Submit a brand-new request instead.
Reminders, notifications & records
Will WrightLeave nag me if I'm not using my vacation?
Yes, starting October 1 of the academic year (three months in), it checks whether you're more than 25% behind the pace you'd need to use your full vacation allowance by June 30. If so, it emails a nudge — spaced at least a set interval apart (60 logical days by default) so you're not spammed. Remember: vacation does not carry over, so anything unused at year-end is simply lost.
Where do notification emails actually go, and can I get push alerts?
Under the My requests tab → "Where to send your notifications," you choose your primary Wright State address, an added personal address, or both (both are on by default). Push notifications (approvals, leave-status updates) are opt-in and require installing WrightLeave to your home screen — on iPhone/iPad this must be done in Safari via Share → Add to Home Screen; iOS only delivers push to the installed app, not the browser tab.
What record do I get once a leave is approved?
WrightLeave auto-fills the official Wright State Department of Psychiatry leave-request-form PDF with your dates, leave type, total working days, approving attendings' names and approval timestamps, and any exception/reason text — then emails a copy to you and to the coordinator (who also gets it filed for the program's records). Your full timeline (every step, email, and decision) stays visible on the request under "My requests."
Roles & sign-in
Who are the different roles, and what can each one see?
- Resident — submits and manages their own requests only.
- Attending — approves/denies via the emailed one-click links (no sign-in required); can optionally sign in to see a year-at-a-glance of resident absences on their service.
- Coordinator (the program office) — sees the Approvals and Admin tabs: pre-approve/deny requests, log sick/personal days on a resident's behalf, run the ACGME-facing annual leave summary, and manage database backups.
How does sign-in work?
Google sign-in, restricted to the residency's Wright State Workspace domain. Your signed-in Google email has to match an existing roster record to get straight in; if it doesn't, your sign-in is held in "Pending sign-ins" for an admin to approve (choosing your role) or deny.
