Medical Residents Work Hours

New limits on medical residents' work hours proposed.
The Wall Street Journal (6/24, Wang) reports that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has proposed new guidelines, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, to limit the number of hours medical residents work and to increase supervision for those with less experience.
The AP (6/24, Tanner) reports that "the draft regulations aim to promote patient safety and reduce medical errors by enhancing work conditions for sometimes sleep-deprived junior physicians." Under the guidelines, "new doctors in their first year of residency training programs" would "be more closely supervised by experienced doctors and the maximum length of their work shifts would be cut from 24 hours to 16 hours."
Meanwhile, "the procedures would trim the length of time interns can be on call to 16 hours from 30 previously," Bloomberg News (6/23, Fridson) reports. The council "restricted intern working hours to no more than 80 a week" in 2003, "and 30 at one stretch after a 1999 Institute of Medicine report found medical errors claimed 44,000 to 98,000 lives annually." But, "a 2008 report...said that a lack of adherence" was "common and underreported."
The guidelines would allow residents "to work a maximum of 28 hours" after "their first year," the Columbus Dispatch (6/24, Crane) reports. "Patient advocacy groups and others criticized the recommendations as not going far enough to reduce doctor fatigue and prevent medical mistakes." Modern Healthcare (6/24, Robeznieks) also covers the story.