News

TIME: Fewer hours for doctors in training leading to more mistakes

By

March 26, 2013

Giving residents less time on duty and more time to sleep was supposed to lead to fewer medical errors. But the latest research shows that’s not the case. What’s going on?

Since 2011, new regulations restricting the number of continuous hours first-year residents spend on call cut the time that trainees spend at the hospital during a typical duty session from 24 hours to 16 hours. Excessively long shifts, studies showed, were leading to fatigue and stress that hampered not just the learning process, but the care these doctors provided to patients.

But the latest data, published online in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that interns working under the new rules are reporting more mistakes, not enough sleep and symptoms of depression. In the study that involved 2,300 doctors from more than a dozen national hospitals, the researchers compared a population of interns serving before the 2011 work-hour limit was implemented, with interns working after the new rule, during a three-month period.

Read the full article at TIME »

Los Angeles Times: Limiting hospital intern shifts may not cut errors, studies find

By

Shortening shifts for first-year interns often doesn’t cut workloads and can cause more problematic patient ‘handoffs,’ researchers say.

March 25, 2013

It’s been 15 years now, but Dr. Sanjay Desai remembers the brutal hours he worked as a young medical intern and how he struggled with fatigue while treating patients.

“There were days we were easily working 36 hours straight and you couldn’t remember how you got home — if you got home,” Desai said. “It wasn’t safe.”

Times have changed. Regulations now demand that teaching hospitals limit first-year trainees to 16-hour shifts. By reducing work hours, medical authorities reasoned, interns would get more sleep, suffer less fatigue and commit fewer mistakes.

But a pair of studies published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine suggest this may not be the case. Researchers concluded that interns were making more mistakes and learning less after the shift restrictions.

Read the full article at Los Angeles Times »

A paradox for young docs: New work-hour restrictions may increase, not decrease, errors

By

U-M-led study of 2,300 1st-year residents questions impact of 2011 duty rules

March 25, 2013

At hospitals around the country, young doctors fresh out of medical school help care for patients of all kinds – and work intense, long hours as part of their residency training.

Traditionally, residents were allowed to work more than 24 hours without a break. In 2011, new rules cut back the number of hours they can work consecutively to 16, in the name of protecting patients from errors by sleepy physicians.

But a new study of more than 2,300 doctors in their first year of residency at over a dozen hospital systems across the country raises questions about how well the rules are protecting both patients and new doctors.

While work hours went down after new rules took effect in 2011, sleep hours didn’t go up significantly and risk of depression symptoms in the doctors stayed the same, according to a new paper published online in JAMA Internal Medicine by a team led by University of Michigan Medical School researchers.

Read the full article at EurekaAlert »

Six eminent scientists share the world’s largest brain research prize

By

Karl Deisseroth among the prize winners

March 11, 2013

The Brain Prize – Denmark’s 1 million euro brain research prize – is awarded to six leading scientists for the development of ‘optogenetics’, a revolutionary technique that advances our understanding of the brain and its disorders.

The names of the prize winners, Austrian Gero Miesenböck, Germans Ernst Bamberg, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel, and Americans Ed Boyden and Karl Deisseroth, were announced on Monday 11 March 2013 in Copenhagen.

Together these scientists laid the foundations for a revolutionary technique – optogenetics – which will provide us with entirely new, fundamental knowledge of the complicated functions of the brain.

Optogenetics makes it easier to investigate diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, pain disorders, schizophrenia, ADHD and addiction. It will play a significant role in the understanding of these disorders and, over time, in the development of a treatment for them.

Read the press release at the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation »

Probing the roots of mental illness & addiction: U-M researchers win national award

By

Huda Akil and Stanley Watson receive Institute of Medicine’s Sarnat Prize

October 15, 2012

A pair of University of Michigan mental health researchers who are partners in both research and life have won a prestigious national prize for their studies on the biological roots of emotions, mental illness and substance abuse.

Huda Akil, Ph.D., and Stanley J. Watson, M.D., Ph.D., who co-direct the U-M Medical School’s Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (MBNI), were awarded the 2012 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health today by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The prize, which consists of a medal and $20,000, was presented at the IOM’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Read the full article at UofMHealth.org »