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Medical Interns Risk for Car Crashes Linked With Extended Shifts

First-year doctors in training, or medical interns, who work shifts of longer than 24 hours are more than twice as likely to have a car crash leaving the hospital and five times as likely to have a "near miss" incident on the road as medical interns who work shorter shifts, according to a study co-funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that was reported in the January 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The article, "Extended Work Shifts and the Risk of Motor Vehicle Crashes among Interns," is the third in a series of studies on the impact of extended work hours and fatigue on interns conducted by the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School in Boston. The first two studies were published in the October 28, 2004, issue of NEJM. All three were co-funded by NIOSH and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
 
The study found that the majority of interns routinely worked more than 30 consecutive hours, and they reported that they were awake 96 percent of their time in the hospital on average. Also, during the 12-month study period, interns reported working an average of 80 hours or more during 46 percent of work weeks and 100 hours or more per week during 11 percent of work weeks.

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