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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but the surgeons and doctors are the ones who want the long hours. They lobbied for them quite hard.

It is “chock full” btw

More specifically, as I understand it their professional organizations have lobbied quite hard to prevent the training of enough new doctors to reduce the need for them to work long hours.

The long hours themselves aren't the goal, they're a side effect of the artificial barriers put up intended to keep pay high.

I think they want long shifts and long breaks but not necessarily long hours as in more hours per week/month/year. Second, doctors are being routinely burned out in med school and residency...

Why would they want that

Increased pay. Long shifts tend to command a premium. Also if demand happens to be low and you manage to take a little nap, you're being effectively paid for your sleep time.

It is common to be scheduled a 24 hour shift - it is expected that you will find time to sleep but will be woken up to tend to an emergency. firefighers and EMTs work this way - sleep in the firehouse (or whereever) but if there is a 3am alarm jump and go to work. I know an ER doctor (in a very rural hospital) who also works this way, when there is nobody needing care he just finds a spare bed and sleeps until someone wakes him. Big hospitals might have enough overnight work to keep some doctor up all night but they still need some sort of backup system because a few nights a year things will be extra busy.

I agree with you - do you have background links on the lobbying efforts?

It's second order, from the AMA lobbying on keeping med school and residency numbers low, to constrain the supply of doctors artificially

>Yeah, but the surgeons and doctors are the ones who want the long hours. They lobbied for them quite hard.

Do you have more information on this?

Not my field, but I have a hard time believing surgeons and doctors want to work to the point of burnout.

I did try and find information myself first, googling for things like “Surgeons lobby for longer hours” and “Surgeons lobby for more work” and am not seeing anything remotely like your claim.

Y'all are the smart one's on this site -- not me.

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