Is an 80-Hour Workweek Enough to Train a Doctor? (2024)

Summary.

In 2003 new reforms prohibited resident doctors from working more than 80 hours per week and limited shift lengths to 24 hours. These reforms were hotly contested. Many doctors worried that the reduction of training hours would hurt the quality of medical training, erode professionalism, and hurt new doctors’ ability to witness firsthand the hour-by-hour progression of a critical illness — all of which could lead doctors to have less experience on which to base future treatment decisions and insufficiently prepare them for the long hours and patient commitments required in real-life practice. While physician sentiment toward long work hours has softened, many doctors, often those who trained in an era without restrictions on work hours, still question whether doctors today are as well-trained as they used to be. In a new study, researchers found that an 80-hour workweek seems sufficient for training a doctor. Analyzing the outcomes of nearly 500,000 hospitalized patients in the U.S., they found that newly independent doctors who trained in a period where they routinely worked 90 to 100 hours per week had no better patient outcomes, despite the additional hours spent in training, than doctors whose residency training involved substantially less time in the hospital. The findings contribute to current concerns about the epidemic of burnout among physicians.