Market for doctors: work rules for surgical residents

Surgical residents are young doctors in training, and there is an ongoing conflict playing out between perceptions of their training needs and patient well being and safety. The Boston Globe reports: MGH cited on surgeons' overload, Trainees' hours exceed safety rule; Hospital says it has fixed problem.

"Junior surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital have been working too many hours, in violation of patient safety rules, according to a national accrediting organization that is threatening to put the hospital’s surgery training program on probation.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education cited the hospital because a significant number of its surgeons in training, known as residents, were exceeding hour limits and working seven days straight. The organization believes these workloads contribute to fatigue-related mistakes, and has given the hospital until Aug. 15 to fix the problem."
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" But five years after the hour restrictions were adopted, Warshaw and other surgeons said frustration is building at the nation’s teaching hospitals, because residents believe the rules interfere with their work and ultimately may harm, rather than help, patients.
The council acknowledged the tension in its April 13 letter to Mass. General, in which reviewers wrote: “The greatest challenge . . . has been getting the culture of the residents to change.’’

..." Dr. Thomas Nasca, head of the accreditation council, lamented in a letter to training programs earlier this year that residents are placed in an “ethical quandary’’ because “we compel them to lie [about their hours] if they do the right thing for their patients.’’
Still, the council is stepping up enforcement, and 5 percent to 10 percent of surgery programs were cited last year, including many of the country’s most prestigious training programs. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was threatened with probation last year, but has since reined in residents’ workloads."
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"Surgeons are adamantly opposed to tougher limits, saying there is little evidence that sending residents home after a prescribed work shift has improved patient care and that the rules actually may be hurting residents’ education. General surgery residents need to complete at least 750 cases during their five-year training so they are ready to operate on their own once they finish.
Any change would also have financial implications for teaching hospitals, where the nation’s 107,000 residents provide the majority of care."

I haven't done any work related to residents' work rules, but I've done a lot of work related to how residents get hired....