Tired Surgeons: How Long Was The Patient Asleep?
In a recent New England Journal of Medicine, a perspective piece on what to do with fatigued surgeons is generating debate. The issue of work-hour restrictions has been a controversial issue when it comes to doctors in training, something that I wrote about earlier in the year in USA Today. But once doctors graduate and practice in the real world, there are no rules.
As summarized in the WSJ’s Health Blog, the perspective piece argues for more regulation for tired surgeons:
… self-regulation is not sufficient. Instead, “we recommend that institutions implement policies to minimize the likelihood of sleep deprivation before a clinician performs elective surgery and to facilitate priority rescheduling of elective procedures when a clinician is sleep-deprived,” they write. For example, elective procedures wouldn’t be scheduled for the day after a physician is due to be on all-night call.
And the authors suggest that patients be “empowered to inquire about the amount of sleep their clinicians have had the night before such procedures.”
It’s a noble goal, and indeed, data does show that fatigued surgeons tend to make more errors. Patients, once confronted with a choice of being operated on by a tired surgeon, may choose to postpone surgery. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
