What have shorter working hours for doctors achieved?

The first years after qualification are difficult for all doctors. It’s a lot of responsibility for someone in their midtwenties. The work is hard and complex and it takes time to acquire the ability to translate the theoretical knowledge acquired at medical school into clinical practice. Neal Chatterjee 1 has recently described the initial rawness and impact of hospital life on the new resident. There are ever-lit hallways, the cacophony of overhead pages, near constant bleeps and buzzes and the stale smell of hospital linen. It’s a foreign world in which the new doctor encounters daily stressful experiences. The question now being asked is whether it needs to be so daunting. Can the working conditions and the environment be improved?