One study found that 49 percent of residents reported falling asleep at the wheel during their residency. Depression is also more frequent in residents on rotations requiring more than 80 hours per week. Many experts believe fatigue to be a significant factor in medical errors, but there are only a few studies that seem to prove it. Forty-one percent of resident physicians attribute their most serious mistake in the previous year to exhaustion. And in nearly one third of those cases, a patient died as a result of that mistake.
Medical errors are one of the nation's leading causes of death and injury.
A recent report by the Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 people die in US hospitals each year as the result of medical errors. For the most part, the medical profession has not taken action on this issue. Others believe residency is a rite of passage that tests resident's worthiness and gives a rigorous and systematic exposure to the realities of the physician's life. There should be a daily limit of 12 consecutive hours in the emergency room and other similarly intensive settings or 16 consecutive hours per a 24-hour period in other areas of the hospital. On-Call should be limited to no more than one night in three.