Â鶹ŮÓÅ

Controversial rules that limit the hours young surgeons can work while in training aren't needed to protect patient safety, a nationwide experiment finds. Allowing surgical residents to work long hours at hospitals doesn't increase the risk that patients will die or suffer serious complications, researchers say. The residents didn't mind the longer shifts either. (Seaman and Emery, 2/2)

The New England Journal of Medicine study comes as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education is reassessing requirements that prevent residents from working extremely long stretches or back-to-back shifts. Those rules were enacted in 2003 and strengthened in 2011 amid concerns that sleep-deprived residents were more likely to make serious errors. Since then there has been push back from residency program directors concerned that the rules created new dangers for patients by abruptly forcing interns to leave in the middle of treating a patient or surgery. They also complain the rules interfere with resident education because it is harder for a trainee to follow their patients. (Rau, 2/2)

Patients’ rates of death, serious illness, infection, pneumonia and most other common post-operative complications were no worse in hospitals that permitted the novice doctors to work longer stints for the purposes of the nationwide study than in hospitals that limited work hours. The "residents," as they are known, said they valued the chance to follow patients for more than 28 hours because of what they learned and did not think that such extended shifts jeopardized their own health. (Bernstein and Dennis, 2/2)