Poll: Patients oppose extended resident work hours

The majority of patients support work-hour limits for medical residents and want tighter shift caps for second-year residents and above, according to a national poll published Sept. 13 by Public Citizen.

The survey of 500 consumers by Lake Research Partners found that 86% of respondents were opposed to eliminating the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s (ACGME) current 16-hour shift limit for first-year residents. Most respondents (80%) also favor decreasing the shift limit from 28 hours to 16 hours for second-year residents and above. More than three-quarters of respondents said hospital patients should be informed if a medical resident treating them has been working more than 16 hours without sleep.

“The public’s apprehension about resident shifts longer than 16 hours comports with the long-standing evidence on the risks of long resident work shifts for both the residents and their patients,” Michael Carome, MD, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said during a press conference. “Medical residents are not superhuman and, when sleep-deprived, put themselves, their patients, and others in harm’s way. This is not a partisan political issue, but one of public health and safety.”

But some physicians called the findings “obvious” and said they fail to address the full picture of work-hour limitations for residents. Evaluating only one aspect of a complex problem risks causing harm through unintended consequences, said Sharmila Dissanaike, MD, Peter C. Canizaro Chair of Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

“The poll reflects that the public would prefer a well-rested physician over a sleep-deprived one – an obvious finding – since we would all prefer our physicians, nurses, police officers, firemen, and anyone who provides essential care or services to us to be well rested,” Dr. Dissanaike said in an interview. “However, interpreting this result as a mandate from the public to increase restrictions on resident duty hours, while well intentioned, is shortsighted and neglects many salient aspects of the problem, including the high risk of increased handoffs and adverse impact on GME training as a whole.”

The poll is the latest development in an ongoing debate about resident work hours and whether cutting shift time for new doctors aids or undermines patient safety. Earlier this year, a host of physician associations called on ACGME to roll back its work limits on first-year residents. The medical associations say current duty-hour restrictions are not improving care, and that the limits are negatively impacting physician training. The American College of Surgeons (ACS) for example, recommends the only restrictions on resident duty hours be a total of 80 hours per week, averaged over a 4-week period, with no other limitations.

The physician associations note a recent landmark study of 117 general surgery residency programs that found longer shifts have not markedly affected patient outcomes. The Flexibility in Duty Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees (FIRST) Trial, published Feb. 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed extended work hours for residents are not associated with a greater risk of early serious postoperative complications or death (N Engl J Med. 2016;374:713-27). Other studies have found similar results.

During a Sept. 13 press conference, Public Citizen representatives called the FIRST study and ongoing iCOMPARE trials “unethical.” The studies have forced some first-year residents to work shifts of 28 consecutive hours or more without their consent or the consent of patients, Dr. Carome said. When polled, 84% of survey respondents said if admitted to a hospital, they would want to know if their health provider was participating in such trials. Public Citizen and the American Medical Student Association have requested prompt investigation and suspension of the trials by the Office for Human Research Protections and have urged ACGME not to allow the trials to continue.

Sleep-deprived physicians are more prone to making errors, injuring themselves, and incurring chronic health ailments, said Charles A. Czeisler, PhD, MD, chief of the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and director of the division of sleep medicine at Harvard University School of Medicine, Boston.

“One of the concerns of the extended-duration shifts that resident physicians work is the impairment of performance,” Dr. Czeisler said during the press conference. “We know when an individual is awake for more than 24 hours, their performance is impaired by an amount that is equivalent to that of being legally drunk.”

Research shows that resident physicians working in intensive care units make 36% more serious medical errors on patients whom they are treating while working marathon extended duration shifts, Dr. Czeisler said. In addition, physicians have a 460% higher risk of diagnostic errors when working extended shifts, he added. Stressing this evidence, Public Citizen and others have called on ACGME to reject scaling back its 16-hour work-shift limit for first-year residents.