Headed for the hospital? You better hope any medical resident or intern who treats you has had some rest recently. A recent study shows that there’s a much higher chance of incurring a medical error, a wrong diagnosis or a medication error if your care provider is sleep-deprived.

Typically, American medical residents and interns work some of the most brutal schedules in the professional world. Their traditional workweek typically runs 80 to 88 hours, with shifts that sometimes run for 30 hours or more.

Statistically, mental processes deteriorate with sleep deprivation. A person who goes 24 hours without sleep operates at a level similar to someone who has a 0.10 percent blood alcohol level – in other words, they act legally drunk!

A study was recently done to determine if a shorter continuous shift schedule would improve job performance among interns. For the study, schedules were reduced to only 16 continuous hours rather than an extended duration shift of up to 30 hours. Instead of 80+ hour workweeks, participants worked no more than 60 hours. Interns were also encouraged to sleep on their time off and to take naps before arriving for night shifts.

When job performances under the two different schedules were compared, here’s what the researchers found: Interns working the longer schedules made 36% more serious medical errors, five times as many diagnostic errors, 21% more medication prescription errors and 22% more critical care unit errors.

Obviously, the medical profession would be wise to reduce the number of hours worked by its interns and residents.

SOURCE: http://www.citizen.org/documents/LimitDo1.pdf