A journal article calls for changes in the design, supervision and financing of U.S. hospital residency care programs to protect patients from serious, preventable medical errors, and end what it calls dangerously long work hours for physicians in training. In a set of recommendations published in the June 24 issue of the online journal Nature & Science of Sleep, the authors say the rules for residency training set to take effect on July 1 “stop considerably short” of best practices to ensure patient safety. Several groups petitioned OSHA last year to regulate the hours that resident physicians work, urging the agency to cut shifts from as long as 30 hours three times a week to a maximum of 16 hours per shift.
