Residents Work Hour Restrictions: Is Less Worth More?

The cult classic about residency training:-before work hour restrictions

Ok, so I was an Internal Medicine resident in the 1990's and the work hour restrictions were supposedly at 80 hours weekly. It is fair to say that enforcement was lax, at best.


These are new times and there are new rules, not only in the USA, but also in Europe. They pivotal question is: does work hour restriction promote better training and safer care? According to this news report, the jury is still out.


I am paraphrasing, but the new resident duty hour restrictions in the USA set an 80 hour work week as the maximum and add further limits such as 16 hour shifts for interns and 24 hours for residents, with 5 hours of 'strategic napping'. Some European countries limit work hours at 48 hours per week.


I am not necessarily against these changes, however,  the limiting of work hours should be robustly studied to assess impact on training and patient safety. As such, I am cautious about concluding that the impact will be uniformly positive.


Now....if only work hour restrictions, especially the 48 hour limit, applied to attending physicians, then I would be very optimistic.