New studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggest that when medical residents are given the opportunity to have shorter shifts, they make more mistakes.
Efforts to reduce working hours for residents were established so that the doctors-in-training have more time to rest, but new reports reveal that it might actually have adverse effects.
Shifts were decreased from 30 hours to 16 hours in 2011, according to a study conducted at the University of Michigan Medical School where 2,323 interns at more than 14 teaching hospitals responded to surveys that addressed overall well-being, sleep habits, work hours and job performance.
And researchers reported that medical errors increased from 15 percent to 20 percent in residents with a shorter shift when compared to those who worked for a longer duration of time.
Even more, shorter shifts did not seem to have any positive affect when it came to depression rates or sleeping patterns.
"Teaching hospitals haven't invested in providing extra help to shoulder any of the clinical work that has to be done," said Elizabeth Wiley who was not involved in the study and is president of the American Medical Student Association.
"It could be the interns are required to do the same amount of work in less time."
There are federal regulations in place that dictate working hours for physicians, but they do not apply to students in a residency program.
Workplace hours for residents are regulated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the institution has been in the process of revising shift durations since 2003.
But in the new study, lead author and director of the internal medicine residency program at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Sanjay Desai said that the alterations being made spell out "unintended consequences" and that shorter shifts have "many negative downsides."
"We need to keep evaluating schedules," Desai said.
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