Shorter Work Days For Doctors

Attached a link to an important NEJM article http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMsb1005800 entitled "The New Recommendations on Duty Hours from the ACGME Task Force."The goal of the ACGME's new approach to duty hours is to foster a humanistic environment for graduate medical education that supports learning and the provision of excellent and safe patient care.
At the heart of the ACGME's proposed changes is the recognition that the least-experienced residents need to be treated differently than more experienced ones. The plan recommends that first-year residents be limited to 16-hour shifts, and those in the second year and above work continuously for no more than 24 hours. They can stay an additional four hours to facilitate patient handoffs to another doctor. Currently residents are allowed to work up to 30-hour shifts.
The guidelines also include detailed expectations about direct supervision of younger residents by more experienced ones, in the hopes that a supervising doctor would catch any error before it affects a patient, according to Dr. Nasca.In addition, the ACGME will step up its monitoring and enforcement of the requirements, conducting on-site visits of each institution annually beginning in July 2011. The site visits are likely to cost each institution about $12,000 to $15,000, according to Dr. Nasca.
Those programs that don't comply with the rules could ultimately lose accreditation and be forced to disband.
I strongly support the proposed changes and call upon my colleagues to do the same.
Our patients deserve the same assurance about the quality of service as millions of airline passenger do already: strictly enforced duty hours for pilots, checklists before take-off and landing, elimination of human errors and the relentless pursuit of excellence.
We must change the way we do business! Our patients deserve it!!
Yours
Bernd