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To the Editor: I was the chair of the group that recommended the original resident duty hour reform,¹ the subject of 2 studies by Dr Volpp and colleagues^2-3 and the accompanying editorial by Drs Meltzer and Arora.⁴ Although the need to change the working hours of house staff has received the most publicity, the focus of the recommendations of the committee's report was on supervision.¹ Of the 17 recommendations for reform in the committee report, only 1 concerned the hours issue. The specific "80-hour week" was actually determined by a colleague on my porch and was based on the following informal reasoning: (1) there are 168 hours in a week; (2) it is reasonable for residents to work a 10-hour day for 5 days a week; (3) it is humane for people to work every fourth night; (4) subtracting the 50-hour week (10 hours per day x 5 days) from . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Bertrand M. Bell, MD
bbell@aecom.yu.edu
Department of Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, New York

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