I love it when other people do the work for me.
Hoover discusses this recent Jama article concerning residency work hours:
Nearly half of all months had violations during ambulatory settings and nearly 62% of months had violations where interns were working on inpatient services.
The ACGME needs to start cracking some balls if they want programs to take these duty restrictions seriously. If nothing is done, or programs are simply slapped on the wrist, the system will continue to be abused and work hour restrictions will be nothing more than fudged numbers on some slip of paper in the program director’s office.
I had mentioned in a previous comment that residency training is an odd bird. This work hour issue is one of those oddities.
Of course, I come from a fairly benign medical school–at least as far as the medicine program is concerned. I never heard much in the way of complaints about work hours from the residents I rotated with. Surgery is another issue…those poor bastards were miserable.
At any rate, who decided it was a good idea to keep people for 30 hours every 3rd night? Or 4th night? Or even 6th night for that matter? Musta been a bunch of military folks…
I have to wonder if the system is in a negative feedback loop. By that I’m wondering if the horror stories lead to fewer med students/residents, which in turn leads to less people to do the same amount of work, which leads to more horror stories, which leads to… I think you see where I’m going with this.
I will not advocate that it should be easy to become a doctor, but it seems the system needs change to attract more people… and to not drive people insane.
Nobrainer - I think you mean a positive feedback loop…it keeps perpetuating itself into self-destruction!
I agree with you but, looking at the competitiveness of medical school admissions it seems that the medical field is not in a crisis for finding people that want to go to medical school. The problem is in specialties…some specialties are finding it hard to find candidates
By the way, Parcho, MD. I like your blog. been reading it for a while but haven’t commented yet.
Susy Cat,
It took me a while to decide whether to use positive or negative. From the strict definition, you are certainly correct. However I chose to use to negative because of the outcome. I guess I should have really called it a negative positive feedback loop.
As for the competitiveness of admissions, are a lot of people being completely left out or just left out of the schools they want to attend? Oh well, even despite a sufficient quantity, it is still arguable that people who could be very good doctors go on to do other things simply because they don’t want to deal with the pain of med school.
Thanks for the kind words Susy.
Nobrainer–med school admissions certainly work both ways. Lots of people just don’t get in to any program–much less the program they want.