I refer to the Malaysiakini report 'Housemen not over-worked in hospitals' .

Based on what I read in my management class (hospitals are a favorite setting for my professor), the health director-general is defending his identity when he says:

‘We worked much harder then and we didn't complain’ - a classic reason hospital administrators in the USA ‘back then’ used while defending the long, long on-call hours.

 

Sleep deprivation is dangerous. Researchers have shown that being awake for 19 hours produces impairments that are comparable to having a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .05 percent.

Being awake for 24 hours is comparable to having a BAC of roughly .10 percent. This means that in just five hours — the difference between going without sleep for 19 hours versus 24 hours — the impact essentially doubles.

Depriving housemen of enough rest is like asking a drunkard to take care of my medical needs. Obviously, it is better to break the 36-hour shifts into shifts of 8-12 hours each for the sake of lowering fatigue.

 

Perhaps its time to stop carrying out old practices because of prior experience ‘back then’. After all, the  medical profession is all about the patients’ well-being and not ‘defending the identity of old doctors.

Sorry, I'm not from the medical profession but as I have a sibling midway through his med- school, I hope to see him not killing or hurting patients due to fatigue imposed on him by the system.