When reforms shortened working hours for U.S. doctors-in-training, some worried: Was that enough time to learn the art of medicine? Would future patients suffer? Now a study has answers, finding no difference in hospital deaths, readmissions or costs when comparing results from doctors trained before and after caps limiting duties to 80 hours per week took effect.
Bettye Jean Ford was in her second trimester when the pressure she had been feeling in her abdomen for weeks turned to excruciating pain. She rushed to a Los Angeles emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and sent home with antibiotics. Still cramping severely, the first-time expectant mother spent the next 24 hours trying to sleep.
Physician training has long been notorious for marathon shifts, sleepless nights on call, and holidays worked. But that began to change in 2003, when the medical profession placed restrictions on work hours during residency. However, experts wondered, can we train residents in fewer hours and still make good doctors?
A third doctor says he was punished by Auburn Community Hospital for complaining about poor patient care at the hospital. Dr. Herbert Kunkle Jr. says in a federal lawsuit the hospital terminated his contract last year shortly after he told hospital CEO Scott Berlucchi the hospital was putting elderly patients at risk by delaying hip fracture surgeries.
Why do medical devices sound so terrible? A group of clinicians, psychologists, musicians and designers are developing signals that are less startling and more informative. Listen here.
"You make time for the things you love.” That’s what I have always said when asked how I am able to be a writer and a doctor-in-training. Over the past decade, I have stood firmly balanced on these twin pillars of my identity. That is, until motherhood changed everything.