Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

As a Chicago medical malpractice lawyer, I support restrictions on the hours that residents can work. Resident doctors need to be well rested in order to learn and adequately perform complicated surgical procedures, and consequences of overworking residents could be fatal for patients.

Liz Kowalczyk (6/23, The Boston Globe) reports, "Junior surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital have been working too many hours, in violation of patient safety rules, according to a national accrediting organization that is threatening to put the hospital's surgery training program on probation."

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education "cited the hospital because a significant number of its surgeons in training, known as residents, were exceeding hour limits and working seven days straight. The organization believes these workloads contribute to fatigue-related mistakes, and has given the hospital until August 15 to fix the problem." The Institute of Medicine, which advises the U.S. government on health policy, "is pushing the council to limit residents' hours even further. It recently recommended that nap time be mandated for residents who work 30-hour overnight shifts."

The most difficult transition has been changing the “resident culture,” as residents do not like the hour restrictions because they feel as though it does not allow them to spend adequate time with patients and forces them to hand off their patients to other doctors mid procedure. However, a well rested physician is less likely to make an error due to fatigue than a physician who has been on call for 30 hours. Avoiding injuries is surely worth any inconveniences caused by the restrictions.