I have watched my share of medical shows on TV and one of the things you learn from these shows is that doctors in training work very long shifts, somtimes 24, 36, or even more hours straight. That has always worried me. As a patient walking into an ER, I don’t want an overtired doctor working on me.
There are plenty of other jobs where there are limits on the amount of hours they can work in a shift and in a pay period, like airline pilots, air traffic control, and truck driviers, to name a few. Seems to me doctors should be right up there in that list.
Beside money, which is always the very bottom line, the other reasoning for these long shifts is that when a person comes in and is seen by one of the doctors, tests have to be done and most of the time these tests take hours. If a doctor or resident only works 8 to 10 hour shifts, they may be off duty by the time the test results come back, which means another doctor would be on duty and not familiar with the case.
I’m not sure whether I agree that it’s a valid point for working long shifts, but I do know that I find it troublesome that doctors know the body needs the proper amount of sleep and yet they go about life without it themselves.
They do have restictions on shift hours, however they are still too long, and if one life is lost because of this it’s one life too many. Stick to a max of 16 hours at a time, and call it a day.