Are these really the people that should be required to work so much? Isn’t their job about handling life and death daily? Wouldn’t we want exactly these people to come fully rested to work every single day and be fully staffed?

I don’t know if there are jobs with similar stakes that are so carelessly staffed and disgustingly paid.

  • atro_city@fedia.ioOP
    8·
    2 days ago

    I’d like to see those numbers. I’m not finding clear numbers on shift-length mortality. This meta review (Systematic Review of the Impact of Physician Work Schedules on Patient Safety with Meta-Analyses of Mortality Risk, 2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.jcjq.2023.06.014 ) says

    Limiting all resident physicians to 80-hour work weeks and 28-hour shifts in 2003 was associated with an 11% reduction in mortality (p < 0.001). Limited shift durations and shorter work weeks were also associated with improved patient safety in clinical trials and observational studies not specifically tied to policy changes.

    I think we can all agree that a 28 hour shift is fucking insane and that anybody doing such a long shift will not be of sound capacity.

    And if hand-offs are killing more people than work hours, then that just means that the hand-off procedures are terrible. I’d want to see what kind of hand-offs are being compared and if hand-off methods have different patient events.