Finally, some common sense on residents' hours in hospitals

WSJ story on new plan from Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to place limits on the hours worked by residents in hospitals.

Finally!

A 2004 report found that first-year residents working all-night shifts were responsible for half of preventable “adverse events.”

In 2003, the council limited resident work weeks to no more than 80 hours, down from the previous unbelievable norm of 120.  The new guidelines say the youngest residents shouldn’t work more than 16-hour shifts while the more experienced ones can go 24.  The current limit for all is 30 hours.

After the experiences we had with Emily’s long cancer fight in the mid-1990s, I learned to ask any doctor I met on a hospital floor or in an ER how long they had been on the shift, and if anybody said more than 20 hours, then you treated them with kid gloves, because extreme fatigue impairs thinking much like alcohol—you just get stupider with each hour just like with each drink.

Long overdue new rule set.