24+ Hour Shifts Yield Decline in Vigilance & Response

Saxena A; George CFP. “Sleep and motor performance in on-call internal medicine residents.” SLEEP, Nov. 2005, 28(11).
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A study published in the November 2005 issue of the medical journal SLEEP highlights the negative impact of sleep deprivation on the performance abilities of resident physicians. The study found that residents who regularly worked “on call” shifts of 24 hours or more performed lower on tests of  response and vigilance than residents who worked schedules accommodating a normal amount of sleep each day. This performance gap did not narrow during the “recovery” period between on call duties, about six days on average, “suggest[ing] that current guidelines allowing 4 to 6 on call duties per month may not allow sufficient time for motor performance recovery.”
 
The study, conducted by Canadian physicians Akash Saxena and Charles George, gathered data from a sample of residents at a Canadian teaching hospital over a period of about one month. Its indications caution that residents who regularly perform extended shifts of 24 hours or more suffer impaired functioning even on shorter work days.