Over the last decade, the training of young doctors has changed significantly, the New York Times reports: in the U.S., work-hour guidelines have existed since 1989, but it wasn’t until 2003 that national guidelines limited residents to working no more than 80 hours per week. And a new mandate, which is going into effect in July, also adds a series of specialty-specific rules detailing everything from length of shifts and rest periods, to “optimal” clinical loads and acceptable exceptions to these work-hour rules. In the European Union, junior doctors are facing even tighter regulations: since 2009, doctors-in-training have been restricted to working no more than 52 hours per week, and starting in 2012, the limit will be 48 hours. But according to a new report in the British Medical Journal that reviewed all the data on restricting resident work hours in the U.S. and Europe, neither side might be right: lifestyle of junior doctors seems to have improved, but decreasing their fatigue has had little, if any, effect on how their patients fare.
General
How important is it for doctors to rest up?
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