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OCR for page 329
Appendix A
Statement of Task
The Institute of Medicine will form a consensus committee to (1) syn-
thesize current evidence on medical resident schedules and healthcare safety
and (2) develop strategies to enable optimization of work schedules to
improve safety in the healthcare work environment. The strategies recom-
mended will take into account the learning and experience that residents
must achieve during their training. The recommendations will be structured
to optimize both the quality of care and the educational objectives.
The committee is asked to deliver its report in 12 months, and thus
will focus on two priority tasks—each with component tasks as well as
related issues to be considered as relevant to the main task but not neces-
sarily studied in depth. Although the issues to be studied are broad ones,
to permit comprehensive coverage of the priority issues in the specified
timeframe, the scope is limited to medical residents (versus all physicians or
all healthcare workers) and their work schedules (versus all work processes
or the entire work environment). The committee is asked to consider the
impact of recommended actions on costs; however, a detailed cost analysis
is outside the scope of the study.
Task #1: Review and Synthesize Evidence on Optimal Resident Work
Schedules, including:
• Evidence on the relationship between resident work schedules, resi-
dent performance, and the quality of care delivered by residents—
specifically patient safety. Consider also evidence on the safety of
the residents, the education and training experience of the resi-
dents, the quality of the interactions from both the resident and
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0 RESIDENT DUTY HOURS
patient perspective, and other aspects of safety and quality of care
such as care hand-offs and transitions.
o As relevant, consider evidence on the relationship between sleep,
fatigue, work schedules, and performance for other health care
professionals as well as generally.
• Evidence on the strategies, practices, interventions, and tools that
have been employed in the United States, Australia, Canada, Eu-
rope, New Zealand, and elsewhere to optimize the work schedules
for residents to assure the safety and quality of patient care. Iden-
tify barriers to change and strategies for overcoming them. Exam-
ine how related issues are handled such as staffing, financial costs,
and other resources. Consider also other approaches to the nature
of resident work and the role of the resident (such as assigning
tasks traditionally assigned to medical residents to other healthcare
professionals) and resident training (such as use of simulations).
o As relevant, consider approaches to similar issues in other health-
care work environments and other industries as well as more
general issues such as teamwork and organizational culture.
Task #2: Develop Strategies for Implementing Optimal Resident Work
Schedules
• Make recommendations for how the strategies, practices, inter-
ventions, and tools identified in Task #1 can be implemented to
optimize resident schedules to improve the safety of the healthcare
work environment and the quality of care.
• Recommend actions for stakeholders including residents, hospi-
tals, professional societies, accrediting bodies, administrators and
funders of residency training programs, federal and state agencies,
and policy makers at all levels. Identify actions that can be taken
in the short and long term. The recommendations should specify
who should take what actions to create a care environment that is
safe for patients, residents, and other health workers. Recommen-
dations should also address anticipated barriers to change such as
the culture of medical education and health care institutions.
o Consider and describe the consequences of these recommended
actions for the cost of medical training and of health care. As
discussed above, costs are to be considered in general terms—
the task is not to develop explicit cost estimates for recom-
mended changes.
