Limiting medical training to 80 hours a week does not harm patients, study finds



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New studies show that reducing the exhausting hours that US medical residents spend on training does not translate into poorer care.

When training hours were limited to 80 hours per week in 2003, some critics said it would hurt the resident's readiness to practice.

"This is probably the most debated subject in medical education for physicians," said Dr. Anupam Jena, lead author of the study, an associate professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School.

"Many doctors trained under the old system believe that today's residents are not sufficiently trained under the new system.Many experienced doctors examine young doctors who leave their training and say: "They are not as prepared as us. were, "said Jena, a physician in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Medicine.

But the researchers found differently.

They analyzed nearly 486,000 patient hospitalizations of Medicare before and after the implementation of the training hours ceiling and found no evidence of impact on the quality of care provided by new physicians.

The study revealed that there was no significant difference in terms of death at 30 days, readmissions to hospital 30 days or hospitalization expenses between doctors who had completed their residency before and after the limit of the number of hours of training.

For example, the 30-day death rates for first-year internists in 2000-2006 and 2007-2012 were 10.6% and 9.6%, respectively.

By way of comparison, the 30-day death rates among patients in the care of a grade 10 physician were 11.2% for the period 2000-2006 and 10.6% for the period 2007-2012.

Hospital readmission rates were 20.4% for patients treated by first-year physicians in 2000-2006 and 2007-2012, compared with 20.1% and 20.5%, respectively. in patients treated by experienced physicians.

"We have found no evidence that the care provided by doctors trained on the 80-hour week model is suboptimal," Jena said in a Harvard press release.

The study was published on July 11 in the BMJ.

The ceiling of 80 hours per week was set after a number of injuries and deaths of high-profile patients who would be due to clinical errors caused by the fatigue of the resident physician.

More information

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