First-year doctors now allowed to work shifts over 24 hours

Doctors in their first year of residency will now be allowed to work shifts of over 24 hours.

This comes after the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education voted last week to remove the 16-hour limit for first-year residents.

Nathaniel Rawicki is a medical student at the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, who was recently accepted into an orthopedic surgeon residency. He said he welcomes the change.

“I think for something like orthopedic surgery, where you only get five years to be as good as you can possibly be, it’s actually probably a good thing,” Rawicki said. “We need all the practice we can get.”

The changes go into effect July 1st.

“We are preparing our students all along the way,” Dr. Kathryn Horn said. “Now they will stay for 24 hours which helps them maintain continuity with their patient — and hopefully, patient safety and the best care.”

Horn is the associate dean for student affairs at the Foster School. “There are plenty of studies that — shortening the hours did not change patient safety a lot. Then there are studies that show shorter hours are better for patient safety,” Horn said. “Nobody is 100 percent on either side.” Some are concerned that the new ruling could lead to more mistakes by exhausted doctors. A 2016 study by The New England Journal of Medicine shows that there was no difference in patient care when surgical residents worked shorter shifts. “In medical school — we’re not working that many hours — but it’s not like we go home and relax. We go home and study more and learn, we read, we have projects to do, things like that,” Rawicki said. “Maybe not quite 24 hours straight, but we’re pretty close and we’ve been doing this for years so I think it’ll be ok.”