I once stayed awake for five days and four nights, when I was in college. I woke up Monday morning and went to sleep Friday around 2:00PM I think. It was finals week, and there wasn’t enough time in the day to study for six finals, finish my projects, and go to work.
Wednesday was when things started to get really hairy. I had my first micro-sleep (that I can recall) in one of my afternoon classes. The professor was speaking from the podium on the right side of the classroom, and then in what felt like an instant later, he was writing something on the whiteboard on the left side of the classroom.
It was exactly like my brain had hit the skip 30 seconds button. He was there one second, and somewhere else the next. This was when I decided that I was no longer safely perform the risky job of driving.
She has it cushy compared to many medical Residents. It is a known problem that truly kills people every year (inexperienced doctor + sleep deprivation = bad news). Some teaching hospitals have implemented a scheduling restriction of only 80 hours a week but, of course, some of the older doctors balk because they had to suffer through the same hazing system…to hell with the patients.
I agree that is a way too long a shift for a nurse (or a Resident). They are the front-line medical professionals doing most of the hands on care and even things like a simple prescription mix-up between patients can and does kill people all too commonly.
There is an equation, I want to say it’s 20 minutes every 4 hours, for what they give military during training. They are trying to create an artificial sense of stress, and that does the trick.
I’m surprised they haven’t been sued for millions or tens of millions by the victims of medical errors or their families. It ought not be that difficult to show that residents working so long constitutes a fault on someone’s part. There may be some ball throwing about whose fault it is but courts are good are cutting through that.
I’ve heard about Modafinil allowing soldiers to stay operational for 96 hours. I can’t report on using it that long but it seems to work fine for 16 hours.
Fortunately, being a Doctor is a significantly different job than being a Nurse, as recorded by research on that exact subject.
Nurses typically have scheduled activities (“check drip at 1AM.”), and are required to be awake and alert at the scheduled time.
Doctors typically have listed activities, and are required to do them when awake, alert, and not doing something else (“finish this report, then check patient”).
Doctors in training in Aus have much shorter hours that in the USA (last I looked). They take more years to train, and get less training in each year. It’s not just the “older doctors” who see an advantage in this.
In Aus they are no longer provided with sleaping and eating and cleaning facilities (my Mother lived in residence, ate at the caf, and wore a uniform: when on duty, they sometimes slept in the surgical theatre) What is the situation in the USA now?