My wife's a doc, in residency, and also Swiss, so I find myself referencing this study [1] on residency hours in Swiss residency programs over years. Bottom line: there are limitations on hours/wk and consecutive shifts, but enforcement of that is a joke + nonexistant, especially among residents (note resident's interest in maintaining their resident status and remaining 'bureaucratically blessed'). [2] See the Albuquerque neurosurgery resident walkout for an interesting business case of the real value of surgeon residents and what might motivate them to cause a big kerfuffle in hopes of bringing about changes. [3] I'm mostly acquainted with attending physicians who don't mind the 60hr weeks when they don't have a choice, and residents who pick up the rest of the work that attendings financially benefit from. Surgery attendings seem to be a special sort of animal. It's just not as simple as limiting hours, unfortunately -_-

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464122/ [2]: https://psnet.ahrq.gov/issue/public-opinion-resident-physici... [3]: https://thesheriffofsodium.com/2022/02/04/how-much-are-resid...

There is such a restriction, at least for NY. It was prompted by a wealthy businessman (naturally): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law

Last I heard (this was early 2010s) at least it Texas, it was capped at 80 hours/week for residents. Seems like a lot but probably better than the 100+ they used to pull.

80 hours a week, averaged over a month. So individual weeks can still easily go over to 100+

In the US, there is a cap for residents: 80hrs per week, but averaged over a 4 week period so individual weeks can go over

it's not like the whole profession has the same contract, but working hours in public healthcare should be regulated, i agree