Twenty-Four-Hour Attending Physician Coverage and Its Impact on Resident Training

Abstract

� is committed to serving the community. We are dedicated to enhancing patient care, teaching and research, and to taking a leadership role as an integrated health care system. The above is excerpted from the mission statement of the hospital that sponsors my residency program. Such a statement is likely to be found similarly worded, if not verbatim, in many others around the country. Although different instruments have occasionally generated contradictoryresults(i.e.,PressGaneyAssociates), at least one major survey (NRCPicker Group) has reported that smaller community hospitals generally achieve greater patient satisfaction than larger teaching institutions [1]. The most common explanation offered for this finding is that community hospitals focus exclusively on the mission of patient care, without having to expend additional resources on teaching and research, and are therefore able to accomplish this singular goal more effectively. These data seem to put the mission of patient care somewhat at odds with those of teaching and re