Fatigue in Hospitals: A Rx for Danger

by Suzanne Gordon

IS ANYONE awake in America’s teaching hospitals? Just barely, according to several new studies.

In spite of limits on hospital residency program hours, interns are still too exhausted to protect either their patients or themselves. In addition, nurses — who used to be alert enough to catch the errors of an inexperienced or exhausted resident — are now working too long and making more errors themselves.

The most recent evidence of this problem appeared in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Associa