New Work hour restrictions

[Perrotfish]

Thought y'all might be interested in this. The ACGME quality care task force on professionalism has just released the new work hour restrictions for residents that should be taking effect in 2011. Here's the link, but I've also pasted the most relevant text below. Basically Interns can't take call anymore. This makes me happy.

• • Duty periods of first year (PGY 1) residents must not exceed 16 hours in duration.
  • Intermediate-level and senior residents (PGY 2 and above) may be scheduled to a maximum of 24 hours of continuous duty in the hospital. Programs must encourage residents, as professionals, to use alertness management strategies to maintain alertness in the context of patient care responsibilities. Strategic napping, especially after 16 hours of continuous duty and during the hours between 10PM and 8AM, is strongly suggested.
    It is essential for patient safety and resident education that effective transitions in care occur. Residents may be allowed to remain on site for periods of no longer than an additional 4 hours in order to accomplish these tasks. Residents may not attend continuity clinics after 24 hours of continuous in-house duty.
    In unusual circumstances, residents may remain beyond their scheduled period of duty to continue to provide care to a single patient. Justifications for such extension of duty are limited to reasons of required continuity for a severely ill or unstable patient, academic importance of the events transpiring, or humanistic attention to the needs of a patient or family. Under those circumstances, the resident must: a) appropriately hand over the care of all other patients to the team responsible for their continuing care; b) document the reasons for remaining to care for the patient in question and submit that documentation in every circumstance to the program director. The program director must both review each submission of additional service, and track both individual resident and program wide episodes of additional duty.

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