[LazaroPearson]

>Also, a 28 hour shift doesn't mean that the doctor is working (or even awake) the entire time - they're on-shift, but there are periods of downtime. It's not necessarily 28 hours of constant activity.

Do you really want me operating on your Mom after 28 hours? I wouldn't. I can't tell you the amount of times a fellow resident has got in a car crash, or made a mistake related to patient care because of lack of sleep.

Also, let me clear up the "periods of downtime" part for you. For the last 6 call nights, I got a grand total of two hours sleep.

Honestly, I created a throwaway specifically to reply to many of (what are in my opinion) very misguided opinions on how these types of hours effect quality of care.

[chimeracoder]

> Do you really want me operating on your Mom after 28 hours? I wouldn't.

No, but I don't want 3 different doctors treating her with that time period either[0] - at least, not with the findings of the peer-reviewed research demonstrating that this leads to higher rates of serious medical errors.

> I can't tell you the amount of times a fellow resident has got in a car crash, or made a mistake related to patient care because of lack of sleep.

Nor could I tell you the number of times critical information has gotten dropped at a handoff boundary, impacting the care of the patient.

Nobody's saying that sleep deprivation doesn't impact medical care. What the peer-reviewed research is saying is that sleep deprivation is less dangerous than frequent handoffs.

[0] which is what 12-hours shifts (as you proposed) could entail.