Residents' work hours: a wake up call?

Abstract

Reduction of resident work hours seems from many perspectives a sensible idea, which is long over due. Long hours in training, a phenomenon which is rooted in a tradition of arduous labor on the behalf of patients and a sense of professional development, appears to many observers as little more than a form of sophisticated hazing that is indeed quite dangerous. Simply put, no one would fly on a plane in which a pilot in training had been awake for 30 hours, especially if the only justification was that this is the way pilots had always been trained, or that this was the only way the pilot could learn to be a pilot. Indeed, it would appear that one of the easiest targets for the emerging safety movement must be the hours that a resident works. There is, however, a counter-argument. If we have residents working shorter hours and spending less time in the hospital, their patients will be covered by other doctors more frequently and there will be more …