Changes in the number of resident publications after inception of the 80-hour work week.

BACKGROUND

Since the inception of resident work-hour regulations, there has been considerable concern regarding the influence of decreased work hours on graduate medical education. In particular, it is unclear whether implementation of work-hour restrictions has influenced resident academic performance as defined by quantity of peer-reviewed publications while participating in graduate medical education.

QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We determined the impact of work-hour changes on resident involvement in the number of published clinical studies, laboratory research, case reports, and review articles.

METHODS

We conducted a PubMed literature search of 139 consecutive orthopaedic surgery residents (789 total resident-years) at one institution from academic years 1995-1996 to 2008-2009. This represented a continuous timeline before and after implementation of work-hour restrictions. The number of resident publications before and after implementation of work-hour changes was compared.

RESULTS

There was a greater probability of peer review authorship in any given resident-year after work-hour changes than before. Average publications per resident-year increased for total articles, clinical articles, case reports, and reviews. There was an increased rate of publications in which the resident was the first author.

CONCLUSIONS

Since implementation of work-hour changes, total resident publications and publications per resident-year have increased.