Doctors have to take decisions under stress, though not apparent.
A doctor when performing his first surgery /first case will tell you that.
Over a period of time and practice, the stress is not visible;but it remains underneath.
A doctor is also a human being with his share of problems professionally and personally.
Fair percentage of Doctors work longer hours either because of their commitment or for financial reasons.
Thus they are deprived of their normal sleep and this could result in life threatening situations.
Doctors must get adequate sleep.
Story:
While regulations have been put in place to restrict the work hours of doctors in training, no such regulations exist for fully trained physicians. An editorial in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine argues that sleep-deprived physicians should not be permitted to proceed with an elective surgery without a patient‘s informed, written consent.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-doctors-required-disclose-deprived-status.html
Related:
People who are getting elective surgery should know how much sleep their doctors have had before going into the operating room, a medical journal editorial says.
Dr. Michael Nurok, an anesthesiologist and intensive-care physician at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, argues in Thursday’s online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that patients should have a right to information on sleep-deprived doctors.
Patients should also be allowed to ask for another doctor or reschedule their surgery, Nurok said.
“The ideal solution here is that patients and surgeons never are put in the situation where an operation needs to happen when a surgeon is fatigued,” Nurok said in an interview with CBC Radio‘s As It Happens.
Surgeons are more often called unexpectedly to operate in busy urban centres than in rural areas, Nurok said, making urban doctors more likely to be fatigued.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/12/29/sleep-deprivation-doctors-elective-surgery.html#ixzz19cnQMOho
