CIR on Work Hours in the New York Times

CIR paid  respects last week to Sidney Zion, a journalist and author who led the national charge for reforms in the training, workload and supervision of resident doctors after his daughter’s death  in a New York City hospital in 1984. Zion died at age 75 on August 2.

Reducing resident physicians’ brutally long work hours has been a CIR goal since our early years. In 1975, ground-breaking contract agreements eliminated every-other-night call for 2,000 CIR members in New York City’s public and private hospitals. These were the first hour limits of any kind in the U.S. In 1989, CIR was at the forefront of the political push that created the first and only state work hour limits – an 80-hour workweek and a limit of 24-hours of continuous call.

 

The New York Times published the following letter August 7 by CIR President L. Toni Lewis:

Sidney Zion, Crusader
To the Editor:

A final bravo to the journalist Sidney Zion (obituary, Aug. 3), who turned a tragic personal loss into a movement that spotlighted the world of medical training’s bone-grinding fatigue and lack of supervision. Thanks to Mr. Zion’s perseverance, New York State paved the way by putting regulations in place to limit resident work hours.

A 2008 Institute of Medicine study calls for further reduction in hours to reduce medical errors, but once again, the medical establishment is resisting reform. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another young woman’s death to force the change that is so badly needed.

L. Toni LewisNew York, Aug.4, 2009 The writer, a doctor, is president of the Committee of Interns and Residents/S.E.I.U. Healthcare.