50 Hour Surgery Resident Work Week Seen as Failure in Switzerland

There has been much written about patient safety, adverse impact on overburdened residents. This led to a reduction in hours for residents. Although not all countries regulate working hours, those that the maximum number of hours per week for a doctor in training can range from as little as 37 hours in Denmark to 80 hours in the United States.
There has been a concern especially in surgery training programs, reduction of working hours adversely affects the quality of surgical training. The problem is the focus of an article in the June issue of Archives of Surgery.
In an attempt to see how these restrictions affect teaching and patient care, Daniel Oertli, MD, of University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues conducted an anonymous survey of residents and consultants in 52 countries from 93 surgical departments. Of 281 residents and 337 consultants, 405 responded.
In Switzerland, from January 1, 2005 population was limited to an hour to 50 hours per week. Every day, day and night work should be limited to 14 hours including all breaks and rest time each day must equal or exceed 11 consecutive hours. Residents are not allowed to work more than two hours overtime except in rare cases and overtime can not exceed 140 hours per year.
Oertli and his colleagues found that only 8.1% of the population and only 4.9% of surgical consultants feel the changes have been useful for surgical training.
More than half of those who responded to the survey (62.8% or residents, 77% of consultants) felt limited the working week had a negative impact on surgical training.
Both residents and consultants (76.9% and 73.4% respectively) said that while the fallen. It has long been one of the questions that critics reduced working hours for surgical residents worry will lead to a decrease in surgical skills.
More consultant than residents (70.1% compared to 43%) thought the quality of patients care has decreased.
Both residents and consultants (58.4% and 81.5% respectively) said the quality of life of residents has improved.
Oertli and colleagues fell 50 hours of constraint failure in Switzerland, but this one study will not address issues on the surgical residents work hours. Controversy over resident fatigue leads to medical errors that undermine the safety of patients and shorter working hours leads to a decrease in surgical skills will continue at this time.