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Study: Long shifts can lead to road dangers
Quality Improvement Monitor, January 13, 2005
Medical interns are more than twice as likely to get in a car crash when driving after working for 24 hours or longer, according to a new Harvard Medical School study.
The study, which appeared in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, included monthly surveys collected from 2,737 first-year interns in hospitals around the country from April 2002 through May 2003. More than two-thirds of the drowsy physicians drove home after their shift.
The data includes police accident reports and shows that each extended work shift per month increased chances of a car crash by 16% while commuting home and raised the risk of any crash by 9%.
The researchers found the physicians worked on-call shifts averaging 32 hours, and most of the time they were only able to get a few hours sleep. About half of the physicians worked from 81 to 140 hours per week.
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