Doctors Work Shifts as Long as 28 Hours
Ever watch the television program “House”? The doctors always seem to be there night and day exactly when the “incurable” patient just happens to be going in to cardiac arrest or Dr. House needs someone to break in to the patient’s home, test their blood and urine or calculate the odds of some unknown cure. That’s just television you say. Turns out that reality is just as strange as fiction. Some of the doctors you see at the hospital are working twenty-four hours or more without sleep, while more experienced residents are working as long as 28 hours. Unfortunately the new rules will not change the work patterns of more experienced residents because of cost.A new report from a conference held in the past year at Harvard Medical School recommended how residents work and are supervised by attending physicians be changed. These extremely sleep deprived residents are responsible for some of the sickest patients in our nation. According toMSNBC, the situation is a disaster waiting to happen.
U.S. Government statistics show that as many as 180,000 patients each year die in hospitals as a result of their medical care which is an alarming number of errors. Errors that represent patient lives. Very few people walk in to U.S. hospitals knowing that their lives are in the hands of someone who is barely lucid from hours upon hours of shift work. The only viable option to patients concerned about their health would seem to be to question the doctor about his own health, and then make the decision best for them.Before being licensed as a doctor, the medical student must transition from school, through the National Residency Matching Program, and in to an internship and medical residency program. This is little more than on-the-job-training for doctors. Depending on the doctor’s specialty, residency can last a minimum of two years to six or more years. The resident is expected to choose his area of expertise during these two to six years. A huge amount of work and responsibility is placed on these young doctors at this time.The accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is the group that oversees training for residents. They issued the new rules for first year residents in September 2010. The council states that they are committed to make the resident hours better. Dr. Lucian Leape is an adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and is a co-author of the report that came about as a result of the conference.
