Opinion: Keep Limits Intact On Medical Residents' Work Hours
Caps on shift lengths for medical residents were implemented to improve patient safety. Given the effects of sleep deprivation on emotional capacity and residents' well-being, why risk longer hours?
Imagine yourself stuck in the hospital.
Would you rather your doctors be well-rested, with a limit on how many hours they can work? Or would you rather they work longer shifts, seeing you through the critical hours of your illness and with fewer handoffs of your care?
That's the choice being reexamined after a study published in this spring in the The New England Journal of Medicine found that longer shifts for medical residents were just as safe as shorter shifts.
The results, which support an that also found no association between shift length and patient safety, have led some that the issue of how long residents should work has now been "laid to rest."
