Changes in Medicine: Residency

Reference as: Robbins RA. Changes in medicine: residency. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care 2011:3:8-10. (Click here for a PDF version)

The most important time in a physician’s educational development is residency, especially the first year. However, residency work and responsibility have come under the scrutiny of a host of agencies and bureaucracies, and therefore, is rapidly changing. Most important in the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies is the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) which accredits residencies and ultimately makes the governing rules.

Resident work hours have received much attention and are clearly decreasing. However, the decline in work hours began in the 1970’s before the present political push to decrease work hours. The residency I entered in 1976 had every third night call during the first year resident’s 6-9 months on general medicine or wards. It had changed from every other night the year before. On wards, we normally were in the hospital for our 24 hours of call and followed this with a 10-12 hour day before going home and getting some well needed sleep. The third day was again a 10-12 hour day before repeating the cycle. This averages over 100 hours per week. There was one week of paid vacation and days off were rare. Both days off and vacations were expected to be done on electives.

First year residents were often poorly supervised despite a senior resident being on call with every 2 interns. Attending physicians were never in the hospital at night. I remember being told by a senior resident, that he was going to bed but I could call him if there was an emergency I could not handle-but he expected me to handle any emergency. I got the message not to call him.

The reduction in work hours was driven by residency directors trying to recruit sufficient residents to fill their slots. Residencies that required every other night call or had indigent level salaries were quickly becoming noncompetitive. By the time I left residency after 3 years, call had decreased to every fourth or fifth night and salaries had risen from about $10,000/year to $14,000/year for first year residents.

The reduction in work hours was brought to public attention and accelerated by the Libby Zion case of 1984 (1). The 18 year old Zion died from a complication of the monoamine oxidase inhibitor she had taken prior to hospitalization exacerbated by administration of meperidine and possibly by cocaine. When her father, Sidney Zion, a journalist/lawyer, learned that her doctors had been medical residents covering dozens of patients and receiving supervision only by phone, he became convinced his daughter's death was due to inadequate staffing at the New York teaching hospital where she died. Determined to ensure that others not fall victim to the same gaps that he blamed for his daughter's death, he crusaded to change resident work hours and supervision with frequent editorials and public appearances.

Over several years a sequence of events occurred to keep Zion’s death in the public eye: a grand jury was called to investigate Zion’s death; the New York State health commissioner appointed the Bell Committee to make recommendations regarding work hours; and a civil lawsuit against the doctors and hospitals was filed by Sidney Zion. All deemed the hospital negligent for leaving a first year resident alone in charge of 40 patients that night. The Bell Commission recommended that residents could work no more than 80 hours a week or more than 24 consecutive hours and senior physicians needed to be physically present in the hospital at all times and these recommendations were adopted by New York State.

The ACGME under political pressure to deal with resident work hours, appointed the Work Group on Resident Duty Hours and the Learning Environment in September 2001. The work group recommended new ACGME standards that were remarkably similar to those of the Bell Commission and these were adopted by the ACGME in 2003 (2).

The rationale behind the work hour reduction is that by working fewer hours and under greater supervision the care delivered by more rested and supervised residents will be better. A tragedy, in addition to Ms. Zion’s death, is that 27 years later we still do not know if this basic premise is true. Although the reduction in resident work hours and the in house presence of attending physicians has undoubtedly increased costs, the impact on length of stay and mortality remain largely unknown (3). The observational, retrospective research that has been done on the impact of resident hour reduction has been sufficiently flawed to make conclusions difficult (4-6). This is unfortunately part of a common trend in administrative medicine, i.e., to initiate changes based on political pressure and later attempt studies to justify the changes.

Concern has been voiced that reduction in work hours and autonomy due to increased supervision may compromise resident education (7). Although there would appear to be little evidence to date supporting this one way or another, I add my voice to those who raise this concern. Making independent decisions is vital to the maturation of residents to independent physicians. The present trend of reducing work hours and increasing supervision, may delay that learning experience to the first year or two of independent practice where correction and constructive criticism are unlikely to occur.

As work hours of residents decline, as medical knowledge expands, and as medical care becomes more complex our residencies will be hard pressed to train competent physicians. One approach is to lengthen the residencies to compensate for the reduced work hours (8). Adding another year or two of residency and/or fellowship is nothing more than extending the indentured servitude of residents to teaching hospitals. 3-6 years of post-graduate training is enough and extending the resident’s time may be more to provide adequate in house coverage than to improve the residents’ education.

I would recommend some carefully designed studies to investigate the impact of shorter work hours. The impact on mortality and length of stay should be examined along with the resident’s fund of knowledge. Perhaps armed with some sound data policy makers can make sound decisions regarding resident education, something we might call evidence-based medicine.

Richard A. Robbins, M.D.

Editor, Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care

References

1. Lerner BH. A Case That Shook Medicine. The Washington Post, November 28, 2006. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112400985.html

2. Friedmann P, Williams WT Jr, Altschuler SM, et al. Report of the ACGME Work Group on Resident Duty Hours. 2002. Available at: http://www.acgme.org/DutyHours/wkgroupreport611.pdf

3. Nuckols TK, Bhattacharya J, Wolman DM, Ulmer C, Escarce JJ. Cost implications of reduced work hours and workloads for resident physicians. N Engl J Med. 2009;360:2202-15.

4. Landrigan CP, Rothschild JM, Cronin JW, Kaushal R, Burdick E, Katz JT, Lilly CM, Stone PH, Lockley SW, Bates DW, Czeisler CA. Effect of reducing interns' work hours on serious medical errors in intensive care units. N Engl J Med 2004;351:1838-48.

5. Volpp KG, Rosen AK, Rosenbaum PR, Romano PS, Even-Shoshan O, Wang Y, Bellini L, Behringer T, Silber JH.. Mortality among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries in the first 2 years following ACGME resident duty hour reform. JAMA. 2007;298:975-83.

6. Volpp KG, Rosen AK, Rosenbaum PR, Romano PS, Even-Shoshan O, Canamucio A, Bellini L, Behringer T, Silber JH. Mortality among patients in VA hospitals in the first 2 years following ACGME resident duty hour reform. JAMA. 2007;298:984-92.

7. McCoy CP, Halvorsen AJ, Loftus CG, McDonald FS, Oxentenko AS. Effect of 16-hour duty periods on patient care and resident education. Mayo Clin Proc. 2011;86:192-6.

8. Larson EB, Fihn SD, Kirk LM, Levinson W, Loge RV, Reynolds E, Sandy L, Schroeder S, Wenger N, Williams M; Task Force on the Domain of General Internal Medicine. Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). The future of general internal medicine. Report and recommendations from the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Task Force on the Domain of General Internal Medicine. J Gen Intern Med. 2004;19:69-77.

The opinions expressed in this editorial are the opinions of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care or the Arizona Thoracic Society.