A new study of young doctors who are notoriously overworked shows that they're often so tired that they perform some activities as if they were hammered had been drinking. The University of Michigan study was the first of its kind to do this kind of sleep/alcohol comparison–previously used on truck drivers, for example–on medical residents. The young doctors who were on a "heavy schedule" slept an average of 3 hours per night. From a press release:
In findings published in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 34 young pediatric residents showed similar impairments in vigilance, attention, and driving skills on standardized tests after they had been on duty overnight in the hospital and worked a month of 90-hour weeks, compared with when they had consumed three to four alcoholic drinks after a month of 44-hour weeks with no overnight duties…
For example: The reaction time of residents who had just finished a month of heavy work schedules was 7 percent slower and they committed 40 percent more errors than when they were on a month of light schedules, On a driving simulator, they had more difficulty maintaining a consistent lane position and a constant speed during the heavy work compared to the lighter work schedule. Speed variability on the driving test was also 29 percent higher following the heavy-schedule compared to the light schedule after drinking alcohol, but there were no other performance differences between these two conditions.
In other words, after a month of 90-hour weeks with overnight shifts every fourth or fifth night, residents performed about the same as when they had a BAC (Blood Alcohol Level) of 0.04 percent after a month of 44-hour weeks of daytime shifts.
Link to press release, Link to JAMA paper
