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…
