Medical Performance
topic
Medical performance — diagnostic accuracy, procedural skill, empathic communication with patients, and clinical decision quality — is measurably impaired by the sleep deprivation endemic to medical training and practice: sleep-deprived residents show 36% more serious medical errors, 460% more diagnostic errors, and significantly impaired surgical performance in simulation studies, while medical internship schedules requiring 24+ hour shifts produce accident rates higher than legally intoxicated driving in the same residents.
Role
Medical culture's normalization of extreme sleep deprivation during training and practice is one of the most extensively studied and most successfully resisted safety problems in healthcare — with evidence of harm accumulating for decades before the partial reform of resident duty hours in 2003, and with remaining schedules still substantially exceeding the sleep thresholds at which safe performance is biologically possible. The majority of patients being treated by sleep-deprived medical providers have no knowledge that their provider's cognitive capacity may be functioning at the equivalent of 0.05–0.10% blood alcohol — a legally impaired state that would prohibit the same person from driving a car.