Public Opinion on Resident Work Hours

Stumbled across this article while researching a completely unrelated topic. Basic idea is that public opinion on resident work hours is rather strongly in favour of suggested restrictions and even is in favour of far more restrictive work hour limits. American-focused, but still relevant here in Canada.

I'm not a huge fan of making policy decisions - in medicine or otherwise - based primarily on public opinion. After all, people can make poor decisions and large groups of people are not guard against poor decision-making. More specifically when it comes to resident work hours, the public probably lacks a degree of perspective necessary to formulate a well-informed viewpoint.

However, the disparity is striking, and demonstrates how out-of-touch the practice of medicine is with the rest of society. While physicians debate the merits of an 80 hour average week, with more than a few physicians coming out strongly against such restrictions, the majority of non-physicians would be in favour of a 60 (or even 50!) hour average week with 80 hours maximum in a week. These opinions were fairly broadly-held, not dependent on demographics or ideology.

What's currently being discussed in medicine in terms of work hours borders on what "normal" people would consider insane. Perhaps these long work hours are necessary due to other factors. Still, even if it is a necessity, it's increasingly hard to maintain the pretense that these hours should be considered manageable by any common standard. Patients don't think their physicians should be working such long hours - if we continue with the current work weeks, we'd better have a very good justification as to why it's necessary they do.