Closed for Comments as of
December 24, 2008
John K. Iglehart
In 2003, the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical
Education (ACGME) placed national limits on the duty hours of medical residents
in the United States. In a
Perspective article, John Iglehart examines a new report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that analyzes the effects
of those limits and recommends additional measures to ensure that hospitals provide
safer conditions for patients and trainees while maintaining rigorous teaching programs.
The report concludes that new steps should be taken to alleviate fatigue and loss
of sleep among trainees, to increase residents’ supervision by more senior physicians,
to improve the processes by which responsibilities for patients are transferred
from physicians going off duty to those coming on, and to stiffen enforcement by
initiating federal oversight of the ACGME regulations.
Comments from readers were accepted through December 24, 2008.
