Essay On Duty Hour Restrictions

Residency is the first stage of post-graduate medical training. A resident is a physician that practices medicine generally a hospital or clinic setting under the supervision of an attending physician. Medical residents hold one of these three degrees: Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.), Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS). When they have successfully completed a residency program, which is a requirement to obtain a license, they can practice medicine in various jurisdictions.

Medical interns and residents often work long shifts throughout the duration of their medical residency. In numerous location, many residents generally work 80 to 100 hours a week. Occasionally, surgical residents log 136 (out of 168) hours week when they are able to. These new doctors are paid on a fixed salary; in some places, they are paid when they are booked for overtime. There have been laws and rules put in place to limit how many hours residents can work without a break. (Gupta, 2001) Throughout the years, limit.s on working hours have led

Duty hour restrictions have brought about more problems than solutions. To avoid federal legislation, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) approved new resident duty-hour regulations that went into effect on July 1, 2003. The regulations limited resident workweeks to 80 hours or fewer and limited continuous duty to 24 hours, with 6 additional hours for transfer of care the first duty hour reform. The second duty reform became effective in July of 2011, the required that duty hours must be limited to 80 hours per week, averaged over a four-week period, including on-call days and moonlighting – activities that are not performed during their residency program. The 2011 reform also stated that work shifts of interns must not exceed 16 hours. (Romano and Volpp,