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> Are residents that much less effective? Yes, because they aren't yet trained to practice medicine. Residency is where they are trained to practice medicine.
by chimeracoder 9y ago
> Are residents that much less effective?
Yes, because they aren't yet trained to practice medicine. Residency is where they are trained to practice medicine.
> Do they require so much supervision?
Yes, both by practicality and by law.
> If residents are just cheaper doctors
They're not "just" cheaper doctors
> then hospitals would optimize for a high resident:attending ratio.
They tried. Patients died. Now we cap both the number of hours they can work per week (80 hours/week) and the resident:attending ration.
- sanderjd 9y agoOh nice! This is what I'm interested in! What kinds of things can they and can't they do without supervision? What is common in practice? Is there a good place to read about how this all works?
- walshemj 9y agoThere a black joke amongst doctors in the UK where all the junior doctors start in the same week each year the mortality rates go up :-)
- paviva 9y agoIndeed, and it's not even a joke, but a real phenomenon. Sources : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896592/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896592/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747093 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747093
- pas 9y agoThen ... that means the supervision of residents is not working. That basically means, it's useless. (Since it'd make sense to apply the maximum amount of supervision when a resident is new and as the resident gains trust, decrease it.) Or of course it means, that attending doctors do a constant amount of (insufficient) supervision, or they ramp up supervision after someone screws up... :|