Help Train Future Physicians: Say Yes to Interns & Residents - Part 3

As a follow up to last Friday's post, I'd have to venture that working 80 hours a week is still a bear.  But it's better than working more than 80 hours a week!  However, if we were to look at work hour limitations from the interns & residents perspective, that's still averaging more than 11 hours a day, 7 days a week.  I mention this little tidbit because in a study published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the authors concluded that the more hours one spends at work, the greater one's risk for heart disease.

They came to this conclusion after following 7,095 men & women w/o heart disease for more than 12 years.  Those who worked 11 or more hours per day had a 67% greater risk for heart disease compared to the more than half who worked 7-8 hours/day.  Furthermore, adding hours worked per day to the Framingham Risk Calculator improved its accuracy in reclassifying and better predicting those who would later develop heart disease.

What's this mean for us?  Sleep is important, sure.  But, so is time off from work.  No one ever claimed on their deathbed that s/he wished s/he'd worked more.  The problem for those of us dedicating ourselves to our jobs is the sacrifice & loss of our own health.