By Ben Harder
While on call, doctors-in-training often spend 30 hours at a stretch at a hospital. Although they may catch catnaps when they’re not needed at a bedside, these interns develop fatigue that can pose risks to them and to their patients.
A new study tested the effects of giving such doctors greater permission to nap—by permitting them to hand off to another doctor the pager that summons them to the next patient. Increases in the amount of sleep the interns get and fatigue reduction could outweigh any risk of miscommunication about needed care that might occur from handing off patients, according to researchers led by Vineet Arora of the University of Chicago Hospital.