Many surgery program directors agree; residency programs with flexible policies for duty hour requirements are superior to standard requirements regarding resident education and well-being, as well as patient care, according to a study in Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
Researchers surveyed 117 surgery program directors last summer as part of their study. Here are three takeaways from the survey results.
1. Every director indicated that residents in their program utilized the flexible hours at some point or another to complete tasks they had started or to stabilize a critically ill patient.
2. Directors of programs with flexible hours observed more positive effects than directors of programs with standard policies in the safety of patient care, continuity of care and resident ability to attend educational activities.
3. Directors of both finds of programs indicated that adopting more flexible duty hours were improve patient safety (71.8 percent), continuity of care (94 percent), quality of resident education (83.8 percent) and resident wellbeing (55.6 percent).
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