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September 6, 2006...In an effort to improve the safety of patients in hospitals around the country, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education adopted work-hour limits for medical residents and interns in 2003 that called for a maximum work schedule of no more than 80 hours per week. However, in the first comprehensive survey of compliance with the work limits, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have determined that nearly 84% of interns reported working in violation of those limits.
The results of the study appearing in the September 6, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), provoked a sharp reaction by a key state senator who holds a leading position concerning health care matters. Senator Richard T. Moore (D-Uxbridge), Senate Chair of the Legislature’s Committee on Health Care Financing, said, “this deadly right of passage (extensive work hours for physicians in training) must end!”
“Here is another clear example,” Senator Moore stated, “that the medical profession cannot responsibly regulate itself when it comes to the safety of their patients or themselves.”
Moore, the sponsor of legislation directing the Department of Public Health to develop and enforce meaningful work hour limitations for medical residents and interns (Senate Bill No. 1263) has called for prompt action on the measure by the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Earlier in the legislative term, the bill won favorable recommendations from the Public Health Committee and the Health Care Financing Committee that Moore chairs.
“I am tired of hearing physicians tell me that they went through exhaustive hours of resident training, so it should be good enough for the next generation of doctors as well,” Senator Moore noted. “However, we need to ask how many of their patients were needlessly killed or injured by their working long shifts without sleep, often not even having one day off in seven from work.”
Senator Moore has been working for the past two years with some of the authors of the study reported by JAMA and convinced his Senate colleagues to address the issue in the health care reform bill passed by that branch earlier in the current session. “Regrettably, we were unable to retain this important provision in the final bill,” Moore explained.
Senator Moore said there is an equally critical problem with the working hours of nurses that has been documented in several research studies. “It’s not just mandatory overtime for nurses that needs to be regulated, we must even limit voluntary overtime.” Moore promised to push for new rules on work hour limits with both the Board of Registration in Medicine and the Board of Registration of Nurses. “If they won’t step in and regulate work hours, I will sponsor legislation in the next term to force the issue,” Moore asserted.
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