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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Especially if you're doing things like operating on people:-/ No restoring from backups, or rolling back to the latest working version if you fuck up.

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That's the exact reason they push interns beyond breaking point. My friend regularly made silly, dangerous mistakes when tired - every time he did a serious dressing down ensued.

Because he was an intern a qualified doctor always double checked him so none of the mistakes were enacted. But he learned his limits and how far it was safe to go.

People put their lives in the hands of doctors; they are under pressure, overworked and often have a tiny margin for error. Knowing your limits is one of the most important aspects.

This is the reason usually only the brightest and hardest workers at school make the grade to become a doctor. Not because of their smarts - but because they can concentrate and focus on a task and achieve highly on it in a consistent way, even under pressure.

What you say is logical, but doesn't quite square with the macho attitude described in the other comment. If you're tired and you realize you're going to do stupid stuff - that you're past your limit, you've learned that lesson, it sounds like.

Providing a safe environment in which to learn how to recognize that you aren't performing at your best is wonderful; it's hard to simulate the other conditions that give suboptimal results, but lack of sleep gives a good cross-section of drowsy, distracted, over-caffeinated, agitated, etc.

FWIW, I've read that the reason for pushing interns beyond their physical limits is simply money, not teaching or building character. It's cheaper to work them ridiculous hours than to hire enough people to do the job well.

Working sleep-deprived for long periods of time doesn't really teach you anything after the first couple weeks. It just lowers your efficiency and increases your error rate. In software development, that causes you to waste time. In medicine, that causes, er, iatrogenic death, or something like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_law#Libby_Zion.27s_d...

I agree that knowing your limit it part of medical school training, but it's also about practicing how to work effectively and safely when you pass that limit. Many doctors will eventually have to perform very long surgeries often over 12 hours of intense concentration with no breaks. Overworking medical students for long shift helps to prepare them for the occasions when they have to perform and have no one to pass the patient off to and no one to closely monitor their work.

Still this can be arranged as a well-defined test instead of humiliation crapfest.

Everything can be.

No, it can't. I am doing research on medical robotics/robotic analogs for surgical practice. Psychologically you can't create the same feelings when the people know it is fake.

Ok, but when it's real and people tell you that they're beyond their limit, in some fields, pushing further is a bad idea. Piloting, mountaineering and surgery come to mind immediately.

I think the real point is that, when people don't know their limits, they might think that they're somewhere below where they really are, rather than somewhere above. If the person's output is still great and they aren't making any mistakes, don't let them quit; keep pushing until they actually start to falter. After doing that a few times in relatively safe environments, you can be sure they'll actually know when to say stop, rather than trusting an uncalibrated instrument (their opinion of themselves.)

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