Opinion: Limits on residents' work hours may adversely affect patient care

Patients' experiences with fragmented care are all too common since last July, when medical residency programs across the country revamped physician-trainees' schedules to comply with new work-hour restrictions imposed by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACMGE). To many outside the profession, the idea that residents ought to work such onerous hours is troubling. But I am concerned that the new restrictions, though well intended, are contributing to a work environment that compromises our clinical education and ability to provide care in a patient-centered manner. They may even have negative effects on our levels of rest and personal happiness—the very outcome these reforms were intended to address.