AI Article Synopsis
- A program using personal digital assistants was created to track medical students' compliance with work hours and relate it to their sleep and performance.
- Students logged their work and sleep hours, revealing significant overestimations and instances of policy violations, with over 19 hours more logged on average.
- Results showed that in-hospital study hours improved clinical evaluations, but negatively impacted standardized exam scores, while more operating room time led to better exam results.
Article Abstract
Background: We developed a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based program to assess compliance with our medical student work hours policy, and to correlate work hours with sleep and performance.
Methods: Medical students on surgery clerkship logged real-time work and sleep hours for 1 week. Estimated work hours, clinical evaluations, and score on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) surgery examination were recorded.
Results: Thirty-seven students logged work hours, which correlated poorly with estimated work hours and sleep hours. The majority of students overestimated work hours by a mean of 19.5 hours. Twenty-four students transgressed written policy. Increased in-hospital study hours correlated with improved clinical ratings but poorer NBME examination scores. Increased operating room hours correlated with higher NBME examination scores.
Conclusions: Medical students inaccurately estimate work hours; a PDA-based log facilitates hours monitoring. Unenforced work hour policies are frequently transgressed. Work activity patterns, but not total work hours, correlated with outcomes on standardized written tests and clinical ratings.
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Source |
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2005.06.048 | DOI Listing |
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