A small scale British study shows that doctors and doctors-in-training made 33% fewer errors when asked to work fewer than 48 hours a week in accordance with the new European Working Time Directive (EWTD) which takes full effect in August 2009. The EWTD makes law a maximum 48 hour working week (including overtime), and a minimum of four weeks paid leave per year in order to protect workers from adverse health and safety risks. It applies to all sectors of activity, both public and private. In the study, doctors’ average sleep time increased from 6.75 to 7.26 hours per day and resulted in fewer potentially life-threatening events. Read more and share your opinion.
Tags: doctors, Europe, European Working Time Directive, medical errors, medical mistakes, safety, sleep, sleep deprivation
Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
I think the directive is a smart move, given what is at stake. However, I would also hope that the directive does not unduly curtail the access to a doctor’s care that a patient should obtain and should expect, irrespective of that patient’s socioeconomic status (as occurs in the United States). Although, if a physician is overly fatigued, then any perceived benefit of seeing a physician that the patient might expect is quickly undermined by that caregiver’s heavy eyelids.
Alternatively, perhaps, sleep cycles need be strictly limited to a ninety-minute cycle as Dement recommended, irrespective of the total number of hours slept by a caregiver in any oen hundred sixty-eight hour period-of-time. Or, perhaps, physician care ought to be limited or constricted in scope between the hours of 1 to 4 A.M. and 1 to 4 P.M. when humans were intended to sleep, hinging, of course, upon the severity of the patient’s injuries incurred during those these same naturally occurring sleepy periods.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:11 am
While the pretense is driving toward a goal of safety the mechanism is more along the line of government controlling the actions of the private sector. Using these rules of control the medical professional is adopting the Socialized Medicine model and will only lead to broader controls being levied. It is up to the Medical community to reign in its own and place better control practices on its doctors. No, government does not have a say when it can not govern its own and as well, as long as we are in a free Republic.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:45 am
This study seems a bit misleading. Of course the “junior” doctors will be making fewer mistakes if their work time is limited… They are working less time, therefore their mistakes will be more sparse, just as their successes will! The article/study says nothing about the rate of mistakes, which would be much more pertinent in this situation.
That being said, would you rather be treated by a doctor who has worked 1000 hours, but made a fewer number of mistakes than a doctor that has worked 2000 hours? I wouldn’t… The doctor that has made more mistakes has inevitably learned from these mistakes, while the doctor that has fewer (and less hours) may never have run into the same problems!
In response to Carl’s comment about socialized medicine: the British system (in London) is socialized medicine, which is what allows them to create mandates like this. And it is a terrible system. And Londoners are not fans, to say the least…
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January 31st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
In response to Don Eccleston’s comments, that he wants doctors to limit their hours, but still have access to those same doctors in an emergency – you can’t have it both ways. Wise up.
February 1st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
There’s another study (Czeisler, Harvard) which unequivocally indicates that patients are put at risk by doctors working excessive hours. And if doctors won’t fix it themselves (which they haven’t) then government most certainly should
February 1st, 2009 at 7:56 pm
This Opinion is as it is an opinion,but if you know God and Jesus Christ then you would know that that is a contradiction to what he says.God said to work on six days and to rest on the seventh.Also there are other reports factual that the Bible states that man is to work while there is light ,in most seasons daylight time is at least 9.5 hrs of daylight.So a 48 hr week is completely healthy.I do recommend you follow Gods guidance as it also states about fasting were many pessamists would think this would probably be unhealthy which would also be under false pretense.
February 1st, 2009 at 8:13 pm
less tired fewer mistakes,cant say more than that.