120 hours/week, 13 days straight

A new article in the American Medical Association's Graduate Medical Education e-newsletter addresses the highly debated topic of a hospital resident's working hours. Some surgical residencies require up to 120 hours per week, 13 days straight. Does this make the resident more prone to mistakes or contribute to his/her training??

Personally, I believe in the recommendations of medical professors over those of the state or federal government (who set the often ignored standards). However, I now know where they derive the term resident as this leaves the physician less than 50 hours per week at "home."

There are other nice features of the newsletter, like a link to this NBC Dateline special on the job of the first-year resident.