Resident work hours on the line - Triangle Business Journal:

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billion annually and threaten patient , which is responsible for evaluatin andaccrediting post-MD medical traininb programs in the U.S., is reviewing whether the currenyt limit on how much residents are allowed to work 80 hours per week – is appropriate. The Institute of a nonprofit that conducts researchon “matters of biomedica science, medicine, and health,” has suggested that the 80-houre limit be maintained but that residents be allowed to work no longe r than 16 hours per shift before being given time to sleep.
The IOM also suggests that residentes get five full days offper month, up from Residents could work only four nights a week and woulr be due 48 consecutive hours off if they work thre e or four straight days. Based on the IOM a study published in the May 21 editiob of The concluded thatthe 8,509 teaching hospitals in the natio would have to pony up $1.6 billionj to hire people to replace the In North Carolina, residentd start out earning aboutt $46,000 a year and get raises of about $1,000 for each year as a Officials at Triangle medicall schools are opposed to changing the current Dr.
Deanna Sasaki-Adams, chief resident of neurosurgeryat , says furtherf capping of resident hourxs would interfere with her ability to scheduls residents. She also believes the chang e would be bad for patientg care because patients more often woulx be handed off from one residengtto another. That, she believes, could increasde the chances for medical error orsubpadr care. “It’s good to ensure you’re not some sort of a but we also don’t want to be shift workers. We want to be she says. Says Dr. Nell Johnson, a first-year obstetricd resident at UNC Hospitals, “I can’t see learning what you need to learn and doing what you need to do in less than 80 a week.
Dr. Jennifer Orning, a second-year neurosurgeryy resident at UNC, agrees. She says she alreadgy spends a significant amount of time outside her 80 hourz filling out forms to let the next resideng know about the patients she has beencarinf for. The IOM plan would requirs moreof that, she says. “If would just increase the roomfor error.” The limits that are in placr on resident work houre are relatively new.
The accreditation council imposedthe 80-houtr cap in 2003 to balance resident education and well-beinfg with patient safety, says Julie a spokeswoman for the accreditation That decision came with a plan to revies it after five years, which the council is now Whatever new standard is selected is expected to be implemented in mid-2010. The issue is a controversial one, with monety at the heart of it. Dr. Brian Goldstein, chievf of staff for UNC Hospitals, says he is afraidf to guess how many people the hospital woul d need to hire to adjust to a reductiojn inresident hours. “It would put additional financiakl strainson hospitals,” he says.
UNC has abour 750 residents, most of them at UNC Hospitalswand . spends more than $70 millioj a year to cover costx related to the 900 residents at its Very little ofthat funding, says Dr. Michaep Cuffe, vice president for medical affairs, comes from Medicare or meaning that the hospital has to fund the residentw fromits operations. Jacob says issue such as hospital costs will not be a factort inthe council’s decision to set maximum hourzs worked. Dr. Suzanne Kraemer, residency program directore at , says no studiesa have clearly shown that reducing resident work hours results in improvexdpatient outcomes.
Rather, there is greater potentiap for harm as patients are passed from one doctoto another, she says. At the same while there is a limi onresident hours, board-certified doctors are free to work as many hourzs as they like. Sasaki-Adams says she is concerned that resideng work limits could be expandedsto doctors. Given the national shortage of physicians, such limitss could prove detrimental tothe health-care industry.