Residents' Hours

The nostalgia with which you recalled the 120-hour workweeks Hopkins residents were forced to endure ["Residency Rules," October] nauseated me. As a night nurse in internal medicine, I observed a very different reality…

The residency program at Hopkins started a revolution in medical education. It was the first residency program established in the nation. Let's start a second revolution in medical education and limit residents to 40-hour workweeks. Let's teach them that they are not gods, but people with a job, and only a part of a larger whole. Let's let the residents have lives and families. Let's let the residents be the amazing and talented people they are when their lives are not consumed by work. The "traditionalist" will say this will never work. But I say, Why not? It works just fine for nurses.

Laura Werking, R.N., Jefferson 2

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