Evaluating Resident Duty Hour Reforms
More Work to Do
- David O. Meltzer, MD, PhD;
- Vineet M. Arora, MD, MA
- Author Affiliations: Departments of Medicine (Drs Meltzer and Arora) and Economics (Dr Meltzer), and Graduate School of Public Policy Studies (Dr Meltzer), University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
- Corresponding Author: David O. Meltzer, MD, PhD, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, MC 2007, Chicago, IL 60637 (dmeltzer{at}medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu).
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- EDUCATION, MEDICAL, GRADUATE
- FACULTY, MEDICAL
- HOSPITALS, VETERANS
- HOSPITALS, TEACHING
- HOSPITAL MORTALITY
- INTERNSHIP AND RESIDENCY
- MEDICAL STAFF
- MORTALITY
- MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION
- PROGRAM EVALUATION
- SAFETY MANAGEMENT
- WORK SCHEDULE TOLERANCE
The long work hours of medical residents have received increasing attention in recent years due to concerns about patient safety and the health and education of residents themselves. Although patient safety has been heavily emphasized in the media coverage of duty hour reforms, the evidence that long resident duty hours adversely affect patient outcomes is relatively poor.1 Indeed, when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) decided to implement duty hour reforms, some expressed concern that patient care could suffer, emphasizing increased discontinuities of care, or the costs of added staffing needed to provide coverage following duty hour restrictions.2-3 Such concerns make empirical analyses of the consequences of duty hour restrictions especially important.
The 2 articles by Volpp and colleagues4-5 in this issue of JAMA are among the first studies to examine changes in patient outcomes following ACGME duty hour reforms. One …
