ACGME Now Restricting Patient Hours, Cites Long Stays Not Helping Residents Learn

CHICAGO, IL – ACGME released recommendations yesterday that inpatients now have a hospital hour restriction.  “We thought it was about time to limit the amount of hours residents are exposed to inpatients,” said Thomas J. Nasca, CEO of the ACGME.  “These patients will just stay on inpatient services for days and days and offer no educational benefit.  They’ll waste time everyday writing notes on these patients that are just waiting for placement.”

The new change will force patients to go home and return only when they have a different illness, preferably something “really cool” or something “the team hasn’t seen in a long while.”

While some patients deemed “rocks” offer residents the ability to track normal daily serums sodium and potassium while wondering why the hemoglobin is slowly dropping with each daily blood draw, they don’t offer much more in educational benefit.

“We think getting rid of patients that are taking up too much time on rounds will offer residents and rotating medical students more time for teaching and learning about medicine,” Dr. Nasca told reporters.

Patients seem to understand.  “Well I don’t want to go over my ACGME hours!  I better go home as soon as I can,” John Herran, a famous rock at the hospital, said.  All patients are required to log their hours or receive nasty emails.

Not all patients are being compliant: hospitals are seeing neurosurgery patients lie about how many hours they are in the hospital.