A new commentary calls on doctors to disclose when they're deprived of sleep and not perform surgery unless a patient gives written consent after being informed of their surgeon's status.
There currently aren't any rules about the number of hours that fully trained physicians may work. The proposed new rules would change how doctors handle their own fatigue, the authors of the editorial pointed out.
"This approach would represent a fundamental shift in the responsibility patients are asked to assume in making decisions about their own care and might prove burdensome to patients and physicians, and damaging to the patient-physician relationship," the authors wrote in the Dec. 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, adding that "this shift may be necessary until institutions take the responsibility for ensuring that patients rarely face such dilemmas."
Research suggests that sleep deprivation impairs a person's psychomotor skills -- those that require coordination and precision -- as much as alcohol consumption and increases the risk of complications in patients whose surgeons failed to get much shuteye.
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