More On Resident Duty-Hours Limits

Delinking resident duty hours from patient safety

Patient safety is a powerful motivating force for change in modern medicine, and is often cited as a rationale for reducing resident duty hours. However, current data suggest that resident duty hours are not significantly linked to important patient outcomes. We performed a narrative review and identified four potential explanations for these findings. First, we question the relevance of reside...

Resident duty hours: past, present, and future

Background Postgraduate medical education is founded on a tradition of service and education and is grounded in the realities of the twenty-first century. The very nature of the postgraduate enterprise is evolving in front of us all, and this is having a wide-ranging impact in a varziety of areas. At stake is both the delivery of quality patient care and the preparation of the next generation o...

A new era for resident duty hours in surgery calls for greater emphasis on resident wellness.

Methods and implications of limiting resident duty hours.

CONTEXT Current limitations on residency duty hours came about after the death of a patient in 1984 in a New York City hospital. This tragedy served as the catalyst for a new public awareness and subsequent change in philosophy regarding resident duty hours, fatigue factors, and risks to patients from the long and tedious shifts of residency. However, it has proven difficult to limit resident p...

Resident duty hours in Canada: a survey and national statement

Physicians in general, and residents in particular, are adapting to duty schedules in which they have fewer continuous work hours; however, there are no Canadian guidelines on duty hours restrictions. To better inform resident duty hour policy in Canada, we set out to prepare a set of recommendations that would draw upon evidence reported in the literature and reflect the experiences of residen...