Have you heard of the new proposed work hours rules for medical residents? If so, any opinions?

Medical residents are MDs or DOs who have completed medical school, but are in the process of completing a medical residency and preparing to sit for the specialty board exams. Residents are physicians in the process of becoming duly licenses. They provide the vast majority of care in the nation’s premier hospitals and trauma centers and are at the front lines of caring for thousands of inner-city patients.

Currently, the ACGME, the licensing body for residency programs, stipulates that residents cannot work for longer than 80 hours per week, averaged over 4 weeks; they cannot work longer than 30 hours per shift (and cannot see new patients in the last 6 hours of a 30 hours shift).

Fatigue is a major problem that leads to a lot of errors that may lead to adverse patient events. More information on that can be found here: http://www.hourswatch.org/.

The Institute of Medicine released in 2008 proposed reforms for resident duty hours. These can be found here: http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2008/Resident-Duty-Hours/one%20pager%20revised%20for%20web.pdf

From these, the ACGME released a very watered down reform proposal that is currently open to public comment http://acgme-2010standards.org/

Of course, for hospitals to fully implement the IOM report, there may be a considerable additional cost to cover some of the hours previously covered by greatly overworked residents. Hospitals are generally opposed to these reforms.

I am curious if anyone on Fluther has experience with this topic, encountered fatigued doctors, or has any opinions on this very intense debate in medicine.