Caffeine is the most widely used drug in the world. That's right, drug,
The take-home message here is that the repercussions of fatigue on residents are considerable. This is a national problem, and we shouldn't consider it solved by an 80-hour cap on hours.
There's just never been anything like this before, with so many displaced people, and they're going to be displaced for so long,
The last thing we want to suggest is that it's O.K. to throw a medication at something without understanding the problem, ... Insomnia is a symptom, not a disorder. It's like pain. You're not going to give a patient pain medication without figuring out what's causing the pain.
We have to continue to educate doctors-in-training, and we should help them develop sleep risk-management strategies. This is particularly important since our study shows that many sleep-starved residents don't recognize that they're impaired.
There's a risk to the resident doctors, and there's a risk to people that residents may crash into on the way home.
They're dealing with challenging kids all day long, and then no one's sleeping at night, ... It's like the straw that broke the camel's back.