Resident Workhours

[J-J]

For anyone who is interested (and it should be all of you guys on this forum), there is a bill in Congress called the HR 3236, the Patient and Physician Safety and Protection Act. It will look out for us when we are residents, ie. no working 36-hour shifts or limiting to 100/wk work hours. New York State already has this law, but we are trying to make it nationwide. Visit the AMSA website for more information, <a href="http://www.amsa.org/." target="_blank">http://www.amsa.org/.</a>
Thanks guys!! Have a happy New Year!!

PS - People have told me that handwriting my letters have more of an impact!

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[LR6SO4]

Please respond to this as you seem to be an AMSA member:
1) Surgery dept. chairs have thought about increasing the residency length by a year if this bill gets passed. England recently lowered their hours too...look up how long it takes to do a residency there. In procedure programs (surg, ob) you have to do a certain number of procedures to finish.

2) Show me the money. Residents are cheap labor. The 80/40 rule applies here: hire a PA or NP to cover the residents work at $80,000 for 40 hrs/wk. Now hire 2 for each resident in your program. Those quaint little community hospitals are now out of business. Night float system to cover call? Ever hear of continuity of care?

3) You are on call and do your 80 hours as a resident from Sunday to Thursday. You are busy, yes. Now on Friday and Saturday after a nice meal and 10 hours of good sleep you want to go and moonlight at your local ER to help pay down some of that debt you have. OOPS! Can't do it. That's in the bill too. Towards the end I believe.

Take care though, I'm doing everything in my power to stop this bill.

 

[J-J]

Sorry, i am actually NOT an AMSA member. i've just recently heard about this bill and thought it was a good idea. however, i am also new to this website and saw, after i posted my post, that there was a whole thread under the allopathic forum. to tell u the truth i really did not think that much about it until i read all the posts. there are lots of problems with this over worked reisdent issue, but i am open to other ideas that people throw forth. i am a second year and i hope (but really doubt) something will be worked out by the time i become a resident!

 

[Tazdoc]

Originally posted by: LR6SO4 There are no alternatives presented for funding those extra hours, no guarantee that a surgery resident could meet all procedures to graduate, and that damn "no moonlighting after 80 hrs" thing just gets to me.••

LR6SO4,

I'm a little confused. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Two of the positions that you have been defending most within several threads on SDN is that the congressional bill, H.R. 3236 makes no provision for extra funds for hiring people to cover the hours and it doesn't permit moonlighting.

Yet, that seems to directly contradict this:

Hospitals don't pay for residents. The Graduate Medical Education bill does. Residents are thus paid by the federal government, so their working conditions can also be outlined in federal funding terms. H.R. 3236 includes funding to support hiring more staff to cover some of the work currently done by residents.

The limit of 80 hours is the maximum number of hours a residency program can make a resident doctor work. We cannot control what a resident does in her or his free time. If a resident doctor chooses to moonlight, they should use their best judgment on their ability to work more hours. Such longer hours are, however, optional and thus allows residents to make their own choices.••

<a href="http://www.amsa.org/hp/resworkdebate.cfm" target="_blank">http://www.amsa.org/hp/resworkdebate.cfm</a>

Am I missing something here? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

 

[LR6SO4]

see my response to this in the allopathic thread. AMSA is lying.

 

[Boomer]

Originally posted by LR6SO4:
•see my response to this in the allopathic thread. AMSA is lying.•••

A little support for LR6SO4, here's a cut and pasted quote from John Conyers's web site:

"Many residents sometimes ?moonlight? - work at other hospitals to supplement their income. This bill would require that residents notify their hospitals of such employment, and prohibit moonlighting if it results in a work week exceeding eighty hours"

You can read it for yourself to see that I'm not making it up at:

<a href="http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_patientsafetyprtectionact.htm" target="_blank">http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_patientsafetyprtectionact.htm</a>

This is this guy's first attempt to try to change the US health care system to the Socialist regime that the Clintons envisioned. When you try to limit the income a profession can make via legislation, you are attacking the very core of capitalism--REGARDLESS of the importance of the service provided by that profession.

Soap box exited....

 

[Tazdoc]

LR6SO4, I responded as well in the former Allo thread--moved to the Rotations....forum.

Boomer, Hey, I'm with you on the moonlighting issue. And DON'T EVEN start me on Clinton

Seriously though, don't lose your perspective of the central issue (and it's not moonlighting) by focusing on the side items.