view PDF - American Association of Neurological Surgeons

TIME
TELLS
Residents Get Less
Operative Experience
After Workweek
Restrictions
Will the newly minted neurosurgeon you hire be as
well-trained as you were For academicians and
private practitioners alike, this is the million-dollar
question. When the 80-hour workweek for all
medical residents became effective July 1, 2003, the
Summer 2003 issue of the AANS Bulletin offered
an overview of the restrictions that were mandated
by the Accreditation Council for Graduate
Medical Education and explored their anticipated
consequences. An opinion survey by Chang and
Bell reported that the majority of respondents, 80
percent of neurosurgical residency program directors
and 56 percent of residents, said they expected
the restrictions to have a negative impact on
neurosurgical training, among other findings.
Some articles attempted to foresee the future of
neurosurgical education, exploring workweek
implementation methodologies and associated
costs, while others reviewed the cost of New York’s
405 Regulations, which preceded the ACGME
restrictions by a decade, and reported the progress
of federal legislation that threatened to supersede
the ACGME restrictions.
Now, with more than two years of data available,
neurosurgery is beginning to apply evidence-based
methodology to determine the actual impact of the
restrictions on the medical education of its residents.
Authors of the two peer-reviewed studies in this
issue analyzed data at their own neurosurgery training
programs to determine the level of compliance
with the work hour restrictions as well as the impact
of the restrictions on the operative experience of residents.
Both studies found compliance with ACGME
restrictions. Both also found that the number of
operative cases generally and significantly decreased
for all residents. Interestingly, the distribution of the
12 AANS Bulletin • www.AANS.org