A study on surgeons in training working hours and errors was published in Archives of Surgery in May of 2012 showing that sleep-deprived surgical residents had a 22% greater risk of causing medical errors than rested residents. Their average number of sleep hours was 5.5 but it ranged from 2.8 to 7.8 hours. They determined that these residents were only functioning at 70% of their mental effectiveness during 27% of their working "day."
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education revised medical resident working hours last July to limit working hours to no more than 16 hours straight for first year residents, but allowed up to 28 hours straight for all other residents. The major reason for this is that the Institute of Medicine predicted a cost of $1.7 billion dollars to implement this change. However, what about the cost of errors for patients and of these young doctors sanity? What would the cost of malpractice be? It seems that the medical profession is more concerned with money than service and nobody cares enough to change this sad scenario!
