The Baltimore Sun reports that Public Citizen and the American Medical Student Association have asked several hospitals to end their participation in studies to determine the effect of resident work hours on patient care, calling them unethical. 

The advocacy groups say that patients are not made aware they are part of the research and have not consented to participating in studies such as the iCOMPARE (Individualized Comparative Effectiveness of Models Optimizing Patient Safety and Resident Education) and the FIRST (Flexibility in Duty Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees ) trials. A poll conducted by the organizations finds that 84 percent of respondents would wish to be informed if they were admitted to an experimental hospital where first-year residents were allowed to work 28 or more consecutive hours without sleep. Read more...

Have you read Dr. Joseph Bernstein's article Not the Last Word: Two Patients, Two Operating Rooms, One Surgeon—Does The Math Add Up? where he highlights that poor policies that spring from storytelling are unlikely to be reversed. What do you think?