Medical resident work hours

Medical resident work hours refers to the (often lengthy) shifts worked by medical interns and residents during their medical residency.

As per the rules of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in the United States of America, residents are allowed to work a maximum of 80 hours a week averaged over a 4-week period. Residents work 40–80 hours a week depending on specialty and rotation within the specialty,[citation needed] with residents occasionally logging 136 (out of 168) hours in a week.[1] Some studies show that about 40% of this work is not direct patient care, but ancillary care, such as paperwork.[2] Trainee doctors are often not paid on an hourly basis, but on a fixed salary; in some locations, they are paid for booked overtime. Limits on working hours have led to misreporting, where the resident works more hours than they record.[3]

Medical resident work hours have become a hot topic of discussion due to the potential negative results of sleep deprivation on both residents and their patients. According to a study of 4,510 obstetric-gynecologic residents, 71.3% reported sleeping less than 3 hours while on night call.[4]

In a survey of 3,604 first- and second-year residents, 20% reported sleeping an average of 5 hours or less per night, and 66% averaged 6 hours or less per night.[5]

In a recent landmark study published in May 2021, the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimated that globally in 2016, more than 745,000 persons died as a result of having a heart disease event or a stroke attributable to having worked long hours (here defined as 55 or more hours per week), making exposure to long working hours the occupational risk factor with the largest disease burden.[6]

  1. ^ "Medical Residents' Work Hours". internetfreespeech.org. Archived from the original on March 10, 2007.
  2. ^ Gupta, Sanjay (15 June 2001). "AMA expected to take up resident work hours". CNN. Archived from the original on May 27, 2006.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference pmid24454999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Defoe, D. (June 2001). "Long hours and little sleep: work schedules of residents in obstetrics and gynecology". Obstetrics & Gynecology. 97 (6): 1015–1018. doi:10.1016/S0029-7844(01)01363-1. PMID 11384712. S2CID 23008897.
  5. ^ Baldwin, Dewitt C.; Daugherty, Steven R. (15 March 2004). "Sleep Deprivation and Fatigue in Residency Training: Results of a National Survey of First- and Second-Year Residents". Sleep. 27 (2): 217–223. doi:10.1093/sleep/27.2.217. PMID 15124713.
  6. ^ Pega, Frank; Nafradi, Balint; Momen, Natalie; Ujita, Yuka; Streicher, Kai; Prüss-Üstün, Annette; Technical Advisory Group (September 2021). "Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury". Environment International. 154: 106595. Bibcode:2021EnInt.15406595P. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595. PMC 8204267. PMID 34011457.