Residents' responsibilities: Adopting a wider view

Current ACGME regulations have limited residents' weekly hours and continuous working hours, a marked change, despite its uncertain effects on physician well-being and quality of care. Although residency programs in internal medicine and family medicine have adapted schedules to conform to these regulations, increasing evidence is accumulating to suggest that these training experiences are not adequately preparing the next generation of practicing primary care and hospital-based physicians. Data from an array of sources continue to demonstrate significant deficiencies in six areas of residents' responsibilities towards their patients: diminished patient "face time" and direct patient care; focus on patients' "reason for hospitalization" or "reason for visit" at the expense of possible neglect of patients' "secondary" medical problems; limited attention to patients' emotional or contextual problems and limited empathy; deficient implementation of the essential constituents of patient-centered care; neglect of habitual "reflective practice"; and excessive distinction between inpatient and outpatient responsibilities, leading to missed opportunities for inpatient residents to be aware of and attend to patients' post-discharge course although new information and readmissions related to the index hospitalization are prevalent. Thus, redesigning residency programs to widen residents' outlook and cover these inseparable components of high-quality care, may infuse the often fatigued and burnt-out residents with purpose and fulfillment, finally incorporating the missing elements of patient-centered care as integral parts of patients' admissions and therefore, of physicians' future careers.