A Whistleblower’s Story

In July 2003 Troy Madsen, MD reported the Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine residency to the ACGME for work hour violations. Sitting at a computer in a housestaff lounge, Madsen, a new intern, detailed what he and other residents had been enduring: residents clocking over 120 hours a week; every other night call; shifts of nearly 40 consecutive hours; far less than 10 hours off the job after being on-call.

Madsen’s was the first official report of work hour violations since the ACGME formally mandated resident work hour limits earlier that month, and a windfall quickly ensued. The ACGME opened an investigation into the complaint that subjected Johns Hopkins’s residency accreditation status to renewed scrutiny. However, in conducting the investigation, the ACGME partially revealed Madsen’s identity as the complainant, exposing him to retaliation by his superiors and ostracism by his disgruntled peers.

Madsen writes about these experiences in the May-June 2004 issue of The New Physician in an article entitled “A Whistleblower’s Story.” Click here to read the article in PDF.