Resident duty-hour limits spur safety, education concerns

Long shifts and lack of sleep among medical residents led the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to restrict work hours in 2003 and again in 2011. However, restrictions on work hours for surgeons-in-training may have backfired, according to a new review that found surgeons performed worse on certification tests and believed patient safety declined after the rule changes. In the review, which was published recently in the Annals of Surgery, researchers examined 135 prior studies. They found that limiting surgery trainees to 80-hour workweeks may improve their well-being, but capping their work shifts at 16 hours might degrade patient care and resident education.

Source: Reuters