Hospital residents working 80 hours a week get nearly as much sleep and provide comparable patient care whether their schedule is highly-structured or more flexible, according to a study looking at extended shifts.
Thirty-day mortality rates for patients in the iCOMPARE study were 12.2% when shifts were limited to 16 hours a day and 12.5% where shifts could be as long as 28 hours. Both schedules gave the doctors-in-training roughly the same number of hours of sleep through the week.
But Dr. Charles Czeisler, director of the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the iCOMPARE results do not prove it is safe to sleep-deprive doctors.
The study measured physician performance where neither the flexible group nor the control group gave residents and interns close to the amount of protected sleep time recommended by a 2009 analysis by the Institute of Medicine, Czeisler said.
Concern about the long work hours that residents and interns are required to work prompted new rules in 2011 limiting shift duration.
