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A comment on Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.. Parent comment

Re:Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S. by seanmcdirmid on Monday July 29, 2013 @04:13AM (#6119882)
That makes sense: experience increases performance, which is why we have intensive residencies; there is a reason why until recently residents were working 80+ hours a week. Perhaps we should ship all our resident-ready medical students off to third world countries where the needs are great so they can become proficient very quickly. Perhaps our system has become too soft.
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Re:Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S. by stonemetal on Monday July 29, 2013 @09:50AM (#6121073)
Perhaps we should ship all our resident-ready medical students off to third world countries where the needs are great so they can become proficient very quickly. Perhaps our system has become too soft.

The problem is they would become proficient at treating the wrong things. Medical conditions vary greatly by geography. Polio is still alive in the third world, Russia is fighting drug resistant TB, and up thread there is a mention of a surgery performed at a 1000x rate in India compared to the US(Once a decade vs once a day). All the while what affects Americans would be glossed over because it doesn't infect the rest of the world at the same rates.

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Re:Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S. by stephencanon on Monday July 29, 2013 @05:15AM (#6120045)
Our residents do work 80+ hour weeks. Until recently, it was 100+ hours.
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Re:Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S. by aioprisan on Monday July 29, 2013 @06:47AM (#6120240)
It's still ~100 hours a week: 6 days at up to 16 hours = 96 hours/week.
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Re:Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S. by stephencanon on Monday July 29, 2013 @07:50AM (#6120431)
There’s a cumulative “in-hospital” time cap of 80 hours/week (88 for neurosurgical residents). In practice, however, this means that (a) the cap is regularly broken or (b) residents end up doing preparatory study, reading papers, doing research, etc outside of the hospital to remain under the cap. They are still working more or less the same hours.

Also, the 16 hour/day rule is only for interns, IIRC. Resident shifts can go up to 30(?) hours.

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