Should Surgical Residency Duty-Hour Restrictions Be Relaxed?

U.S. residents are required to work no more than 80 hours weekly, with additional restrictions on frequency of night call, shift length, and time between shifts. These restrictions (compared with unrestricted work hours) are intended to prevent fatigue-related medical errors, but rigid adherence to duty-hour restrictions could potentially create harms by disrupting residents' ability to provide continuity of care. To examine these tradeoffs, researchers randomized 117 U.S. general surgery residency programs to continue current duty-hour policies or to implement a “flexible” policy that retained the 80-hour maximum work week but permitted longer shifts and less time between shifts.

During the 1-year trial, the rate of postoperative death or s…