I'm a nurse and I find the 7th point on the post especially relevant. I will add a disclaimer that I never worked in the ICU so I can't speak for what happens in that type of unit. There is a serious issue with the flow of information in healthcare, (or at least in the U.S, I never worked elsewhere to know if it's any different). But If you find something during your shift which will be important to know later on, it…
This comes up every once in a while when discussing the crazy 24+ hour shifts that doctors in residency are often assigned. One argument in favor of keeping the hours is that continuity of care is by far the factor most strongly correlated with good patient outcomes. So the argument goes that a change in caregiver is more detrimental to the patient than continued care from one doctor even if that doctor is sleep depr…
As much as I hated doing 24-28 hour shifts on inpatient services, continuity of care does matter and errors do occur in handover.
You have to keep in mind that medicine between 12am and 6am is what we call “keep people alive.” 6am to 12pm after an overnight is for handover.
You’re not trying to diagnose a new illness overnight or make changes in management, your job is to deal with acute overnight concerns only. Furthermore, you’re supported by services such as RACE (an in hospital emergency response team) so you’re not dealing with critically ill patients alone. If you’re on a surgical service and need to go to the OR, staff/fellow + senior residents come in to help.
Acute care services where you’re seeing new/undifferentiated patients and need to be on your game, such as ER and radiology, tend to limit shifts to 8-12 hours.