Melanie Tremblay, MD, Patricia-Anne Reed, MD, Alex Paré, MSc, Émilie Comeau, MD, FRCSC. Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
Introduction: It is known that surgical residents suffer from sleep deprivation. No recent study evaluated the type and number of calls received at night. Lately, burn out, depression and suicide have been the subject of interest in studies and media because of the higher rate among the residents compared to general population. The objective of our study is to evaluate junior resident’s level of fatigue and the quantity and quality of calls received during on-call nights in general surgery at CHUS.
Methods and procedure: Transversal study conducted on 17 junior residents that were on-call in general surgery at the CHUS between April 25 and August 27, 2017. The participants detailed all the calls received between 11pm and 6am on an database created on the application HanDBase© and completed a daily calendar of their on-call night noting all the tasks they did every half hour (surgery/consultation/sleep). The level of fatigue was evaluated at the end of the night at 8am with a visual analog of sleep scale on a score over 5 points.
Results: The level of fatigue 4/5 (tired) or 5/5 (exhausted) was reached in closed to 50% of the on-call nights. The median number of calls by night was 3 and the median duration of sleep was only 3.3 hours. The median lenght of uninterrupted sleep was 2.5 hours by night. Among the total 110 nights and 384 calls analyzed, 15% were “not pertinent” and 10% were “reportable in the morning”. More than 28% of the nights had at least one call “not pertinent” or “reportable in the morning” that have interrupted the junior resident’s sleep. The level of fatigue was significantly correlated to the number of calls received during the night (Spearman’s rho = +0.380, p<0.001) and to the number of uninterrupted hours of sleep (Spearman’s rho= -0.687, p<0.001).
Conclusion: The level of fatigue is very high among the junior residents in general surgery. Many of the calls received during the night are not pertinent or could have been delayed to the morning. Our results lead us to the conclusion that interventions and recommendations should be made to raise nurses and resident’s awareness about the situation to reduce the unnecessary calls and the level of fatigue of the residents. We hope that on-call resident sleep will be better preserved and that will result in fewer health issues for them (burn out, depression, suicide).
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 87909
Program Number: P765
Presentation Session: iPoster Session (Non CME)
Presentation Type: Poster
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