A medical student group urged support of the Patient and Physician Safety and Protection Act of 2003 in a statement whose release coincided with the July 1 effective date of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s (ACGME) restrictions on resident work hours.
The 40,000-member American Medical Student Association (AMSA), an independent, student-governed national association of students, interns and residents, holds that the ACGME’s new guidelines lack independent oversight and enforcement, as well as whistleblower protections for residents.
The absence of anonymous reporting provisions in ACGME’s guidelines will discourage residents, who depend on their superiors for letters of recommendation, from reporting infractions of the guidelines, AMSA said. The group also said that the ACGME guidelines neither allow for public disclosure of hospitals and programs that force residents to work long hours, nor incorporate civil penalties for programs that violate the regulations. More information is available at www.amsa.org. Also see “Federal Legislation Eventually May Restrict Resident Work Hours,”
Manda J. Seaver is staff editor of the Bulletin.