I know there are some huge culture differences from surgeons, doctors, and nurses so I don't mean to conflate them. But I remember hearing that longer nurse shifts had better patient outcomes because so much was lost in handoffs between shifts. There was a study formalizing shift handoffs and patient outcomes improved significantly (I think it did beat out longer shifts, but I'm not sure).

I've been to specialists offices who had a rotating practice where you saw whoever was in that day. You still usually had a primary person you saw for scheduled appointments. I still think patients prefer dealing with a single person and am sure things get lost in doctor's notes or even if you make a phone call to the original doctor.

Medical training seems to promote normalizing very long work ours and sleep deprivation. I know I've heard about law suits trying to point out the egregiousness of it. Long shifts and being on call 24/7 definitely simplifies staffing. I was in a tech support department that went from 40hr support to 24/7 and it was significantly more challenging to manage.

I hope we can improve things because it seems almost inhumane in how we treat medical professionals as well as patients.

Coming from the nuclear industry, this sounds crazy, even compared to our outage culture.

NRC says that you can work up to 16 hours, then you MUST go home for 8. It takes some paperwork to get a one-time exception.

(i) 16 work hours in any 24-hour period;

(ii) 26 work hours in any 48-hour period; and

(iii) 72 work hours in any 7-day period.

As a 20 year operations shift supervisor this is still way too many work hours. Mistakes happen at the end of long shifts.

My grandfather owned a tiny hospital in a small town. He was a surgeon. He went to france during the great war with the British Army. There were only two surgery rooms at the town. His room was one of them. His hospital was half his big house. His home was the other half. He lived busy until age ninety. The war never finished for him.

Under EU legislation (Working Time Directive?) you have to be allowed an 11 hour break period in each 24 hours, not sure how that works with doctors?