Medical Residents Have to Sleep After 16 Hours of Service
For anyone, there is a limit as to how far you can go as far as staying awake is concerned. Particularly for people in profession, it would be wise to know when to keep on going and when to sleep. As far as medical people are concerned, it has been found that after 16 hours, they better slow down and get some rest if they want to remain competent.
Forced to go beyond that could lead to inconsistency as far as rendering their expertise and that can be more room for danger especially that medical resident people are expected to take care of people in any level of emergency possible as far as health is concerned.
A survey of about 4,000 interns found that in the first year those rules were in effect, 84 percent reported working shifts that violated them at least one month of the year. Forty-three percent reported working more than 80 hours weekly.
(Source) Washington Post
Tags: health, hours of service, interns, medical residents, profession, sleep, working shifts
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December 4th, 2008 at 1:11 am
I sleep only for about 5 hours everyday. I know that it’s not enough but it’s my job - I have to get up at 5:30 a.m.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I can’t even imagine this. How do they remain effective at their job if they are constantly tired and need sleep? That is the biggest cause of errors on work. Its really a bad news that medical residents have to suffer from this.
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:27 am
How exactly can they treat and help others when they are sleep deprived themselves.
And EIGHTY work hours per week, sometimes i wonder why do they opt to go in this profession in the first place.
John W.
Editor and Author,
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May 3rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Since the first year that these limitations were put into place, compliance has improved quite a bit. I trained during the time prior to these limitations, and while it’s difficult, it’s often necessary to get the amount of experience needed while still under the supervision of attending physicians in order to be competent to perform unsupervised in the future. Also, I feel that we are currently training a generation of physicians that very willingly turn over their patient care responsibilities when the “whistle blows” regardless of what is going on.