The effect of changing the duty hours of internal medicine interns, on personal satisfaction and promotion of education

Numerous studies have shown that prolonged duty shifts reduces the quality of rest, decreases the quality of responsiveness, decrease the response time and dramatically increases the rate of medical errors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in internal medicine intern duty hours through a 3-month period and to examine its effects on different individual, behavioral, and educational aspects of medical interns.

 This was a Quasi-Experimental Study. Two groups of medical interns were selected as control and intervention groups. The control group will normally run their ward. The case group will pass their period by having the regular working hours but the shifts were separated into 2 (for example, a 24-hour shift split into two 12-hour shifts). At the end of the course, they fill in a questionnaire form containing several questions about different educational, behavioral, and other parameters.

 The total number of interns participating in this study was 83. Independent t-test results indicated that the subscales of individual, educational, and behavioral response scales increased after shifts (P <0.001), with a significant difference (P<0.001), with satisfaction From the changed status, it was significantly decreased (P <0.001).

The results of this study have shown that despite the positive effect of changing and correcting the working hours, interns do not have personal satisfaction with it. The reason for this can be attributed to the freshness and incompleteness of this change, the resistance to the change, as well as the commuting problems (for both resident and dorm interns).