The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(August 2015) |
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]
Medical residencies usually require lengthy hours of trainees. Trainees are traditionally required to be present for set shifts, with the ending time of the shift dependent on momentary circumstances. The flexibility of this system makes it easy to abuse.
Junior doctors often lack bargaining power and have difficulty changing employers. This leaves them with little say over their working conditions. Critics of long residency hours note that resident physicians in the US have no alternatives to the position that they are matched to, meaning residents must accept all conditions of employment, including very long work hours, and that they must also, in many cases, contend with poor supervision. [1] This process, they contend, reduces the competitive pressures on hospitals, resulting in low salaries and long, unsafe work hours. The National Resident Matching Program has also been accused of deliberately limiting the available residency posts, thus decreasing the demand for residents, despite work for many more residents being available.
In emergencies and in chronically understaffed health systems, all staff, including junior doctors, may be overworked. In some cases, excess work may be disproportionately assigned to junior doctors.
There are financial incentives for overworking junior doctors. Since the least-experienced staff are usually paid less, it is cheaper to assign paid overtime to them. Deliberate understaffing and paid or unpaid overtime for junior doctors is thus used to reduce costs for medical facilities, although this may also reduce quality of care, which can be expensive.
The medical culture has also been blamed. "Generation-bashing", where senior doctors look down on junior doctors who work fewer residency hours than they did, can push junior doctors to overwork. [7] A desire for formal recognition, such as promotion, may also be important. [3] A higher "entry barrier", with work conditions poor enough to burn out some residents, may be actively desired.
There is also a belief that long hours do, or can, improve training. The ability to follow a patient from admission through the next 30 or 40 hours may be valued more than observing several patients for shorter periods.
The desire to continue caring for a patient frequently leads doctors to work for longer than is permitted. [3]
The evidence for harm to people who are deprived of sleep, or work irregular hours, is robust.
Research from Europe and the United States on nonstandard work hours and sleep deprivation found that late-hour workers are subject to higher risks of gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, miscarriage, preterm birth, and low birth weight of their newborns. [8] [9] [10] It has also been shown that slow-wave sleep assists in clearing out toxins that build up during the day. Consequently, the disruption of slow-wave sleep increases the level of amyloid-beta, a protein aggregate commonly found in Alzheimer's, present in cerebrospinal fluid the following morning. [11] Chronic sleep deprivation and the resulting fatigue and stress can affect job productivity and the incidence of workplace accidents. [12] There are also social effects. Married fathers in the United States who work fixed night shifts are 6 times more likely than their counterparts who work days to face divorce; for married mothers, fixed nights increase the odds by a factor of 3. [13]
The public and the medical education establishment recognize that long hours can be counter-productive, since sleep deprivation increases rates of medical errors and affects attention and working memory. Chronically sleep-deprived people also tend to strongly underestimate their degree of impairment. [14] A study found that after 24 hours of sustained wakefulness, hand-eye coordination decreased to a level equal to the performance observed at a blood alcohol concentration of roughly 0.10%. [15] In a meta-analysis of 959 physicians, staying awake for a continuous 24 to 30 hours decreased physicians' overall performance by nearly 1 standard deviation and clinical performance by more than 1.5 standard deviations. [16]
Competence is affected by the number of work hours, number of continuous work hours, regularity of sleep, and frequency and speed of handovers to the next shift. "Night float" seems to have particularly bad effects, due to the circadian misalignment cause by abrupt switches between day and night shifts, but is the most commonly used method of adapting to duty hour restrictions. [17] [18] [19]
Many studies have found performance impairment in medical residents due to sleep deprivation. The average sleep time was less for the same emergency department residents working night shifts than when working day shifts, and they took longer to intubate a mannequin and made more errors in a triage simulation when working on the night shift than the day shift. [20] First year medical residents given an EKG arrhythmia-detection task performed significantly worse while sleep-deprived than when well-rested. [21] Medical residents were also found to take more time and make more errors on laparoscopic procedures after one night on call. [22] [23]
A 2004 landmark study found reducing sleep deprivation substantially reduced errors in intensive care units. The study redesigned first-year junior doctors' schedules to minimize the effects of sleep deprivation, circadian disruption, and handover problems, assigning four shifts where there had been three and allowing an hour's overlap for handovers at the ends of shifts. Each junior doctor was closely observed under both schedules. Errors were recorded (and corrected); they were then rated for severity by other doctors blinded to which treatment the errors had occurred under. Doctors and observers inevitably knew that they were part of a study. [19]
In 2015 two controlled studies of the effect of the ACGME-mandated maximum shift began, involving nearly 190 hospitals and residency training programs. The studies randomly assigned medical residents to shifts longer than specified by the ACGME regulations. A study led by the University of Pennsylvania, which will end in 2019, assigned residents in 32 medical training programs to shifts as long as 30 hours. It used 31 other programs as a control group. Despite the longer shifts, the other overall rules were still adhered to. The other study, led by Northwestern University and ending in 2015, was similar in design. Both were conducted with the approval of the ACGME. In neither study were residents and patients necessarily told they were part of a human subjects experiment and informed consent was not required, which caused some controversy. [24] [25]
Regulatory duty hour restrictions, in theory, should reduce the number of duty hours worked. In practice, they may not [7] because the restrictions are not always followed. Studies to evaluate the effects of duty hour restrictions on patient outcomes have been somewhat mixed.
Many of the studies rely on self-reported hours, self-reported errors, and self-reported sleep deprivation, with large opportunities for bias. More objective measures, such as tracking, perceptual tests, and blood hormone levels, are generally not used. Measurements of patient deaths and harm are often used as response variables. Many of the studies that have been done on this topic are specialty specific and so cannot be generalized to all medical residency programs.
The 2003 working-hour restrictions imposed in the US by the ACGME allowed many studies comparing patient outcomes before and after the reforms. They generally show little effect. This corresponds to the impressions of medical staff.
One 2014 systematic review of 135 studies spanning 1980 to 2013 showed no overall improvement in patient safety but still indicated that duty hour restrictions have increased morbidity in some cases. [26]
Another systematic review of 27 studies conducted in 2015 found similar results, and a 2007 study of over 8 million hospital admissions of Medicare beneficiaries that compared mortality rate before and after implementation of the ACGME standards showed no difference in mortality. [17] [27]
One study of 318,636 patients done in a Veterans Administration setting showed that work hour restrictions reduced mortality substantially for a similar set of diagnoses. [28]
Another study found that the 2003 ACGME reform restrictions were associated with a small reduction in the relative risk for death in 1,268,738 non-surgical patients drawn from a national survey of hospitals. [29]
When surveyed about duty hour restrictions, both medical and surgical residents, as well as residency faculty perceive that patient safety hasn't changed or has suffered as a result. [30] [31] [32] [33] Additionally, many residents note an increase in self-reported errors. [30]
It is largely felt that actual duty hours (opposed to reported duty hours) have not changed substantially: prior to the implementation of work hour regulations, residents were already working an average of 82 hours per week. [34] Many studies rely on self-reported hours, but significant bias to under-report duty hours exists for a few important reasons: One is that statutes do not provide whistleblower protections to residents who report work hour violations. Second, the penalty for work hour violation is loss of accreditation, which would adversely affect medical residents and prevent them from becoming board certified. Finally, some residents may be pressured by their residency programs to underreport hours [3] or even punished if they do not. [35]
Moreover, these studies – particularly the ones that find favorable results - may fail to account for confounders that positively impact outcomes, including the wide adoption of electronic medical records, a shift toward team-based care, and implementation of best practices. [36]
Duty hour regulations may not address the root causes of medical errors, and may inadvertently create new problems that impact patient outcomes. In order to adhere to duty-hour standards, residents must handoff their patients to other residents more frequently, which can lead to miscommunication, interrupted continuity of care and increased errors. [37] Also, most studies show that residents see more patients now, despite having less time, leading to more administrative work and less time for direct patient care and education. [38] [39] One systematic review found that resident learning has been unfavorably impacted by duty hour regulations, and because medical education affects knowledge and competence, this may result in poor decision-making and medical errors. [26]
The most commonly proposed method is regulation of working hours, but this is ineffective if regulations are ignored. Whistle-blower protection laws, protecting residents who report violations of working-hour regulations from losing their residencies and thus their route to professional accreditation, have been proposed. [40]
Increasing the bargaining power of residents has been proposed, on the argument that they would then choose the best training programs. The 2002 Jung v. Association of American Medical Colleges anti-trust case sought more freedom for medical residents to negotiate working conditions. In order to obtain accreditation as doctors, American medical residents are required to enter into a contract to accept whatever residency position they are assigned; they are then matched to a job by the AAMC and told what the working conditions and pay are. The plaintiffs allege that this is an anti-competitive practice, and that the defendants artificially limit the number of resident positions available. [41] [ self-published source? ] [42] The suit had some early success, but failed when the U.S. Congress enacted the Pension Funding Equity Act in 2004, which exempting matching programs from federal antitrust laws.
Where there is a shortage of doctors, proposed solutions include reducing the costs of medical training and more extensive training for nurses, who then take over duties formerly done by doctors. [43] Improving the working conditions of doctors might also increase recruitment and decrease burnout leading to fewer doctors leaving medicine.
Junior doctors in the European Union fall under the European Working Time Directive, which specifies:
However, junior doctors may choose to work more than 48 hours a week, or opt out of the EWTD entirely by signing a waiver with the employer. They may not be punished for not working more than the directed hours. Many trainees nonetheless feel obliged to work longer hours. The rest times are mandatory, but may be taken at another time if it cannot be taken as scheduled. [44]
The issue is politically controversial in the United States, where federal regulations did not limit the number of hours that can be assigned during a graduate medical student's medical residency. Starting in 2003, with revisions in 2011, [45] regulations from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education capped the work-week at 80 hours. As of 2018, shifts are capped (with limited exceptions) at a maximum of 24 consecutive hours of direct patient care with an additional 4 hours for transition of care (sign out, completing notes, etc.) for first, second, and third year residents. [24] [46] [47] [48] [49]
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has limited the number of work-hours to 80 hours weekly, overnight call frequency to no more than one in three, 30-hour maximum straight shifts, and at least 10 hours off between shifts. While these limits are voluntary, adherence has been mandated for accreditation.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) built upon the recommendations of the ACGME in the December 2008 report Resident Duty Hours: Enhancing Sleep, Supervision and Safety. [50] While keeping the ACGME's recommendations of an 80-hour work week averaged over 4 weeks, the IOM report recommends that duty hours should not exceed 16 hours per shift for interns (PGY 1). The IOM also recommended strategic napping between the hours of 10pm and 8am for shifts lasting up to 30 hours. The ACGME officially recommended strategic napping between the hours of 10pm and 8am on 30-hour shifts for residents who are post graduate year 2 and above but did not make this a requirement for program compliance. The report also suggests residents be given variable off-duty periods between shifts, based on the timing and duration of the shift, to allow residents to catch up on sleep each day and make up for chronic sleep deprivation on days off.
Though the ACGME regulations were intended to increase medical resident sleep hours and improve patient safety, they had also created unintended negative consequences in the education of new residents and the workplace learning culture. In 2017, the ACGME changed its regulations once again, citing a trial conducted from July 2014 to June 2015 in 117 general surgery residency programs. [51] In the Flexibility in Duty Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees (FIRST) trial, programs were randomly assigned to a group following current ACGME duty-hour restrictions or a group with more flexible policies that waived rules on maximum shift lengths and time off between shifts. [52] When looking at primary outcomes of 30-day rate of postoperative death or serious complications, less-restrictive duty-hour policies were not associated with an increased rate of death or serious complications. [52] Starting July 1, 2017, the ACGME raised the maximum number of consecutive hours a first year resident can work from 16 hours to 24 hours. [49]
Despite the sleep deprivation medical residents constantly experience due to long working hours, a minority of residents still wish to not have work hour regulations at all. [4] In the survey of 4510 obstetric-gynecologic residents, about one in five opposed any limits on their work hours. [4] These residents cited "additional experience" as the most common reason (69.0%), followed by "opportunity to see rare cases" (46.5%) and "continuity with patients" (31.8%). [4]
The Libby Zion case, in which an 18-year-old college student died of a drug interaction after being treated by a fatigued intern and resident in a New York hospital, led to the establishment of the Bell Commission in 1987 to address physician training hours. [53] Although the serotonin syndrome was not widely known at the time (neither by the house staff nor the attending physician), the Bell Commission continued to address the house officer sleep deprivation issue. Its recommendations were adopted by the state of New York in 1989, and limited residents to no more than 24 consecutive hours in the hospital, and no more than 80 hours a week with an in-house supervising attending physician present at all times. [54]
Though other federal regulatory and legislative attempts to limit medical resident work hours have materialized, none have attained passage.
Dr. Richard Corlin, president of the American Medical Association, has called for re-evaluation of the residency training process, declaring "We need to take a look again at the issue of why is the resident there." [2]
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rejected a petition seeking to restrict medical resident work hours, opting to rely on standards adopted by ACGME, a private trade association that represents and accredits residency programs. [55] On July 1, 2003, the ACGME instituted duty hours requirements for all accredited residency programs, since revised in 2011. [48]
The ACGME duty hour standards that went into effect in July 2003 require:
Following the ACGME's proposed regulation of duty hours the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) followed suit. Below are the requirements adopted by the American Osteopathic association. [56]
Another related issue regarding the imposition of maximum hour policies for medical residents is the question of enforcement, where some enforcement proposals have included extending U.S. federal whistle-blower protection to medical residents in order to ensure compliance and afford medical residents certain employment protection. [40]
There are still inherent problems with the current ACGME policy. Resident duty hour restrictions are difficult to assess and enforce. Also, it is unclear who is ultimately responsible for monitoring duty hour adherence (i.e. state licensing boards, residency programs, attendings, residents, etc.). Additionally, a one-size-fits all solution may not be ideal, since the need for certain duty hours may vary among specialties.
India
The work hours of medical residents in India remains highly unregulated. Indian researcher Dr Edmond Fernandes, Founder of CHD Group called for regulating work hours but the same has not been implemented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare till date. [57]
Although strategic napping is recommended by the ACGME, no studies have assessed the effect of napping as a fatigue mitigation technique. Requiring naps during long shifts could be a small step toward reducing fatigue and potentially decreasing errors. Resident surveys suggest that a greater emphasis on education, decreased workload, and more ancillary support would better improve patient outcomes. [37] Focusing on hospital best practices and physician incentives like pay-for-performance in residency could help with the implementation of some of these solutions.
Techniques to reduce circadian misalignment include avoiding abrupt changes in shift time, getting more sleep, which makes the sleep schedule more flexible, and the use of caffeine and ambient light of specific wavelengths. [18] [19]
Neurology is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the spinal cord and the peripheral nerves. Neurological practice relies heavily on the field of neuroscience, the scientific study of the nervous system.
Emergency medicine is the medical speciality concerned with the care of illnesses or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. Emergency medicine physicians specialize in providing care for unscheduled and undifferentiated patients of all ages. As first-line providers, in coordination with emergency medical services, they are primarily responsible for initiating resuscitation and stabilization and performing the initial investigations and interventions necessary to diagnose and treat illnesses or injuries in the acute phase. Emergency medical physicians generally practice in hospital emergency departments, pre-hospital settings via emergency medical services, and intensive care units. Still, they may also work in primary care settings such as urgent care clinics.
A general practitioner (GP) or family physician is a doctor who is a consultant in general practice.
Anesthesiology, anaesthesiology or anaesthesia is the medical specialty concerned with the total perioperative care of patients before, during and after surgery. It encompasses anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine, and pain medicine. A physician specialized in anesthesiology is called an anesthesiologist, anaesthesiologist, or anaesthetist, depending on the country. In some countries, the terms are synonymous, while in other countries, they refer to different positions and anesthetist is only used for non-physicians, such as nurse anesthetists.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada is a regulatory college which acts as a national, nonprofit organization established in 1929 by a special Act of Parliament to oversee the medical education of specialists in Canada.
Hospital medicine is a medical specialty that exists in some countries as a branch of family medicine or internal medicine, dealing with the care of acutely ill hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is caring for hospitalized patients only while they are in the hospital are called hospitalists. Originating in the United States, this type of medical practice has extended into Australia and Canada. The vast majority of physicians who refer to themselves as hospitalists focus their practice upon hospitalized patients. Hospitalists are not necessarily required to have separate board certification in hospital medicine.
Shift work is an employment practice designed to keep a service or production line operational at all times. The practice typically sees the day divided into shifts, set periods of time during which different groups of workers perform their duties. The term "shift work" includes both long-term night shifts and work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts.
Residency or postgraduate training is a stage of graduate medical education. It refers to a qualified physician, veterinarian, dentist, podiatrist (DPM) or pharmacist (PharmD) who practices medicine or surgery, veterinary medicine, dentistry, podiatry, or clinical pharmacy, respectively, usually in a hospital or clinic, under the direct or indirect supervision of a senior medical clinician registered in that specialty such as an attending physician or consultant.
Family medicine is a medical specialty within primary care that provides continuing and comprehensive health care for the individual and family across all ages, genders, diseases, and parts of the body. The specialist, who is usually a primary care physician, is named a family physician. It is often referred to as general practice and a practitioner as a general practitioner. Historically, their role was once performed by any doctor with qualifications from a medical school and who works in the community. However, since the 1950s, family medicine / general practice has become a specialty in its own right, with specific training requirements tailored to each country. The names of the specialty emphasize its holistic nature and/or its roots in the family. It is based on knowledge of the patient in the context of the family and the community, focusing on disease prevention and health promotion. According to the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA), the aim of family medicine is "promoting personal, comprehensive and continuing care for the individual in the context of the family and the community". The issues of values underlying this practice are usually known as primary care ethics.
Medical education in Australia includes the educational activities involved in the initial and ongoing training of Medical Practitioners. In Australia, medical education begins in Medical School; upon graduation it is followed by a period of pre-vocational training including Internship and Residency; thereafter, enrolment into a specialist-vocational training program as a Registrar eventually leads to fellowship qualification and recognition as a fully qualified Specialist Medical Practitioner. Medical education in Australia is facilitated by Medical Schools and the Medical Specialty Colleges, and is regulated by the Australian Medical Council (AMC) and Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) of which includes the Medical Board of Australia where medical practitioners are registered nationally.
Medical education in the United States includes educational activities involved in the education and training of physicians in the country, with the overall process going from entry-level training efforts through to the continuing education of qualified specialists.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is the body responsible for accrediting all graduate medical training programs for physicians in the United States. It is a non-profit private council that evaluates and accredits medical residency and internship programs.
Shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder characterized by insomnia, excessive sleepiness, or both affecting people whose work hours overlap with the typical sleep period. Insomnia can be the difficulty to fall asleep or to wake up before the individual has slept enough. About 20% of the working population participates in shift work. SWSD commonly goes undiagnosed, and it is estimated that 10–40% of shift workers have SWSD. The excessive sleepiness appears when the individual has to be productive, awake and alert. Both symptoms are predominant in SWSD. There are numerous shift work schedules, and they may be permanent, intermittent, or rotating; consequently, the manifestations of SWSD are quite variable. Most people with different schedules than the ordinary one might have these symptoms but the difference is that SWSD is continual, long-term, and starts to interfere with the individual's life.
New York State Department of Health Code, Section 405, also known as the Libby Zion Law, is a regulation that limits the amount of resident physicians' work in New York State hospitals to roughly 80 hours per week. The law was named after Libby Zion, the daughter of author Sidney Zion, who died in 1984 at the age of 18. Sidney blamed Libby's death on overworked resident physicians and intern physicians. In July 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education adopted similar regulations for all accredited medical training institutions in the United States.
Most physicians in the United States hold either the Doctor of Medicine degree (MD) or the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree (DO). Institutions awarding the MD are accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). Institutions awarding the DO are accredited by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA). The World Directory of Medical Schools lists both LCME accredited MD programs and COCA accredited DO programs as US medical schools. Foreign-trained osteopaths do not hold DO degrees and are not recognized as physicians in the United States or in other jurisdictions.
Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary widely in severity. All known animals sleep or exhibit some form of sleep behavior, and the importance of sleep is self-evident for humans, as nearly a third of a person's life is spent sleeping. Sleep deprivation is common as it affects about 1/3 of the population.
Fatigue is a major safety concern in many fields, but especially in transportation, because fatigue can result in disastrous accidents. Fatigue is considered an internal precondition for unsafe acts because it negatively affects the human operator's internal state. Research has generally focused on pilots, truck drivers, and shift workers.
Studies, which include laboratory investigations and field evaluations of population groups that are analogous to astronauts, provide compelling evidence that working long shifts for extended periods of time contributes to sleep deprivation and can cause performance decrements, health problems, and other detrimental consequences, including accidents, that can affect both the worker and others.
Sleeping in space is part of space medicine and mission planning, with impacts on the health, capabilities and morale of astronauts.
Jung v. Association of American Medical Colleges was an antitrust class-action lawsuit that alleged collusion to prevent American trainee doctors from negotiating for better working conditions. The working conditions of medical residents often involved 80- to 100-hour workweeks. The suit had some early success but failed when the US Congress enacted a statute exempting matching programs from federal antitrust laws.
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