r/WhatIsTheTea • u/SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 • 4h ago
Sips Tea I mean, this is a good point, is it not?
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u/PaperUpbeat5904 3h ago
I've been told 12hr shifts reduce the amount of hand offs to new nurses. Which is more time for patients.
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u/Kookerpea 3h ago
Its because more medical errors are related to change of shift
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u/Stock-Eggplant6105 3h ago
Yep. Though sometimes I wonder if that number is more than the medical errors made when actively working for that long straight.
Deeefinitely a world away from 24 hours, though. That should be straight up illegal. Not even a continuity of care thing at that point, just inhumane level of work 'rights'....
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u/moeterminatorx 2h ago
It’s most often that the systems set up for handoffs are not the best and rely more on memory. That of course gets worse the longer the shift is.
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u/SmoothActuator8132 49m ago
they literally tested exactly that and found less errors with 12 hour shifts
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u/Expensive-Taste-5120 2h ago
It’s hard to tell the new person everything the patient has told you/everything observed
AI could make a huge impact, and it is
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u/MockStrongman 50m ago
As a Preventive Medicine physician, the handoff argument infuriates me. It was one of the major rationales used to move away from the 16-hour cap and back toward the current 24+4-hour system for residents. We can build systems that make handoffs safer. We cannot build a system that erases the physiologic and health consequences of keeping people awake and working that long.
The fatigue literature increasingly points toward needing roughly 10–11 hours off between shifts to meaningfully protect recovery and reduce fatigue-related harm. That matters for the workforce, but it also matters for patients.
Patients Come Second should be required reading for healthcare administrators. The premise is deliberately provocative, but the point is important: if you take care of the people delivering the care, patients ultimately receive better care.
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 3h ago
Who wants a doctor or nurse working on you after being awake for 20 hours?
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u/cybiz 3h ago
Some surgeries take 20+ hours and there's less errors if the same doctor/nurse is there for the whole thing compared to swapping them out. These clips have been recorded in an operating room
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 2h ago
That might be an exception. Get them some cocaine or meth or whatever, in that case.
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u/Tall_Birthday_7654 2h ago
Having done plenty of both in my time, I do not want a surgeon on either rooting around in my innards
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 2h ago
I'd take a surgeon with a light dose of meth (or something like a moderate adderall dose) to one with 20 hours of no sleep.
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u/OwlsEyeGems 2h ago
You can take one with adequate sleep. They don't work that long straight on you. 8 hours, sure. But 24 hours, definitely not. 24 hours on call? Sure, but nowhere on earth are you going into a room with a surgeon who's going to be working on you for 24 hours straight, and no one is starting a procedure after being awake for 20 hours. We have a responsibility to practice more safely than that, similar to how we expect people to stop and sleep if they're tired on the motorway.
Less seriously though they're probably on adderall anyways. I don't have enough fingers to count how many colleagues are on medication for ADHD, including myself.
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u/Wapiti-Lover 2h ago
If read the studies you're referring too and "long" surgeries in those studies are "at least two hours long". To claim there are less errors if the same team performs a 20+ hour surgery is ridiculous.
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u/Stock-Eggplant6105 3h ago edited 2h ago
No, they absolutely swap teams. They're all in from the beginning but there's no 20 hours straight working on a surgery. They swap and sleep. If you want errors then you can guarantee some when you don't swap out for that long.
*Hey just FYI organ transplants take a few hours, not an entire day. For something like 20+ hours there's multiple surgeons, teams and specialties and they are all tagged in and out. They rotate specifically for patient safety. Switching over does not cause more errors than quite literally being the equivalent of drunk and falling asleep with a knife inside someone. They DO rotate.
Obviously for shorter procedures like organ transplants they're not going to do that, are they? Because they do not need to and the risk of switching outweighs other risks. At 20 hours game changer entirely. Healthcare workers are people, stop pretending they're superhuman. You can work safely for 8 hours not 20.
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u/cybiz 3h ago
https://news.vt.edu/articles/2026/04/pamplin-bit-research-organ-transplant-task-switching.html You know there's studies on that right? Error rate increases by 15% if surgeons swap mid surgery. Reason is pretty simple, the new surgeon doesn't know exactly where the other one finished.
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u/Stock-Eggplant6105 2h ago
Task switching in organ transplants which are maybe at most a full shift, if not a couple hours, is WORLDS away from 20 hour long surgeries. They swap if it's that long. Look up the right thing for god sake. No one should be doing surgery for 20 straight hours. It is not safe and that's not how they do things in real life. How old are you that you actually don't see how insane that is?
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u/Snowyfall38 2h ago
Wheres your link bud, if you dont work it, dont question it.
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u/Wapiti-Lover 2h ago
You think a "simple" liver or kidney transplant takes 20+ hours?
Kidney usually are like 3-4 hours and Liver is like 8 hours.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/kidney-transplant/multimedia/kidney-transplant-surgery/img-20204209There are studies about handover vs one team for the whole surgery and they define long surgeries as "surgeries longer than 2 hours". that 20+ hour claim is ridiculous.
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u/OwlsEyeGems 1h ago
Look at it from their point of view. They could have had a neurosurgeon work on them for 24 hours straight without rest, and can no longer count between two and twenty.
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u/carrot_gummy 1h ago
We as humans can stay up for a pretty long time and stay alert during that time if we need to. But we are going to need extended rest afterwards and cannot do it consistently. It also helps if we know its coming and can prepare for it. So, the issue isn't the rare 20+ hour operation but its constant 20 hour shifts that are a problem.
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u/elle-angel 33m ago
idk about 20+ hour surgeries, but i witnessed a 13 hour surgery once and tbh it goes by quite fast bc you're really locked in.
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u/OwlsEyeGems 2h ago
I actually work in surgical procedures. Ones that take that long are pretty rare, but they have multiple dedicated teams. So no one surgeon or nurse is working on you for twenty hours. Different specialties from the multidisciplinary team come together to work on it and they take on a sort of tag-in-tag-out approach.
Doing actual surgery for twenty hours would be, needless to say, a massive patient safety problem and would make an already risky procedure riskier. When surgeries are expected to take this long, a very long and complex plan is laid out so people aren't stranded inside someone on hour twelve. For obvious reasons lol.
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u/Stock-Eggplant6105 2h ago
This precisely. They don't. Even surgeries that long have multiple teams and specialties rotating in and out. No one is actively working on someone for 20 hours, don't let the doofus with a study on simple organ transplants tell you that's the same as a 20 hour procedure. We can have a surgeon work safely for 8 hours, not 20.
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u/Fuzzy-Welcome-4650 2h ago
Better that than being seen by one doctor or nurse, than another.
More mistakes happen during changes of shift than due to exhaustion.
That’s not to say that no mistakes ever happen due to long shifts. But it’s the lesser of two evils.
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u/EfficiencyUnited6804 3h ago
I had a colleague whose wife is a doctor, and he said he would not let his children become doctors because of the long hours, the constant need for learning even when not working, and having almost no time for oneself.
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u/Ijustlovevideogames 3h ago
It is a very good point, but just like how we don't have enough teachers, we also don't have enough people going into medicine to not do this.
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u/Dmau27 3h ago
Getting an education is unaffordable to most these days.
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u/Zappa2329 1h ago
We should eliminate student loans or grants for English/Sociology/Anthropology/Art -type majors, and offer free education for people to get into healthcare. Way better ROI.
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u/ModForgeCustoms 1h ago
I see things like this mentioned, and that seems like a great idea.
For 10 years ago.
With the current administration gutting healthcare, and education? We have to work on getting stuff back before we can begin to implement new and effective societal chances. There is absolutely zero chance anything like this would even be entertained for the next 2 years minimum.
They would call you a socialist and laugh.
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u/Zappa2329 1h ago
I think it could be sold to conservatives as defunding woke studies and investing in STEM.
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u/Gooseberree 46m ago
You know we’re cooked when this is our outlook on higher education—disincentivize the humanities.
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u/Gooseberree 2h ago
At the level of physician, we have too many going to into medicine in the US. At least that’s what the medical administrators convinced us.
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u/Ijustlovevideogames 2h ago
Oh, is that the reason they don’t respect you guys enough; too many people in there, makes sense :)
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u/Gooseberree 44m ago
Umm. Sorry, not quite what you were getting at. But I want to make it clear that we have farm more people trying to be physicians than we have openings for physicians in the US.
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u/JoffreeBaratheon 1h ago
Why would this be a headcount issue? Having say 4 people alternate 24 hour shifts every 4 days would take the same as 4 people alternating 12 hour shifts every 2 days?
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u/Alt123Acct 2h ago
Family who work hospitals swear it's because less tradeoffs between patients means better grasp on their situations and can have more direct better care. It's like when you call insurance and get one agent who hears your story and then stays with you for 30m figuring it out and connecting you places vs saying the same thing 3x to 3 different people and each one asks "what's your social? Why are you calling? Can I verify this is you? " each time you connect to another voice. Hospitals are busy.
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u/No_Spite3593 3h ago
If healthcare professionals worked reasonable shifts people would be pissed that they were getting transfered so often, it may also lead to more mistakes from having multiple people constantly having to be briefed on someones situation.
I know this post shows nurses but sometimes it is simply unavoidable. Some surgeries have taken days to complete, many take hours. Many times the hospital is understaffed, there aren't many people clamoring to work night shifts for example. Would you be more upset that the person treating you is tired, or more upset that you aren't able to recieve treatment at all?
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u/Independent_Pop_9987 3h ago
Actually dead wrong. Having more than one set of eyes or another educated brain to check you out is definitely more worth while than a single opinion of someone who may have a habit of missing certain things. Also its a field that tons of people are fighting to be in or are completely miserable living it.
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u/No_Spite3593 3h ago
That wasn't my point. My point was if you're in the hospital for lets say 24 hours and there are multiple shift changes for all the people involved in your care it may lead to more mistakes if your previous team relayed information incorrectly, or failed to relay important info at all for whatever reason. Like a bad game of telephone. But I also never made a definitive statement so perhaps you're correct 🤷🏽
My main point still stands though, would you rather be treated by someone who is tired or not get the opportunity to be treated at all?
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u/MathematicianAfter57 3h ago
There is a rise in patient complications around shift change. Shift changes are among the most dangerous times for patients.
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u/derp-birb 3h ago
I'm sorry but where in the world are healthcare workers regularly working 24 hour shifts??? Apart from things like surgeries where you can't exactly be rotating all the time, so you'll sometimes need to do longer hours, I've never heard of that wtf?
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u/kevin3350 3h ago
One of my roommates was a nurse. She was paid to sleep in the hospital for 8 hours of a 24 hour shift, but had to wake up if something happened. She was a specialist in post surgery cardiac care, so sometimes they’d need her overnight.
It’s not common, but it happened. It’s like firefighter shifts - you’re on duty, you can sleep, but if someone might die you wake up and do the job.
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u/Sodpoodle 3h ago
Pretty common in EMS in the US.. Because adding driving with healthcare and sleep deprivation is, uh, a good idea?
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u/elderlybrain 2h ago
Having done numerous 24h continuous shifts, i can guarantee it’s a thing and we hate it.
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u/Gooseberree 2h ago
OB hospitalists routinely do it. I’ve seen OB anesthesiologists routinely do it. Rural ER physicians do 12s, 24s…up to 96s technically. Of course, those ER physicians aren’t constantly working when they’re at facilities that allow super long shifts. The facilities that max out at 24-hr shifts do not promise sleep for the doctors.
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u/MirukuChu 2h ago
I only work 24s as a Paramedic. Know others who reguarly do 48s or longer. Merica
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u/MockStrongman 45m ago
Many of my friends across surgical specialties take in house call every 4 days. And that will increase if one of their partners is out for any reason.
In residency there is the max 80 hour per week restriction averaged over a 4 week period. Every resident knows other residents that have to lie about their hours worked to avoid their program getting in trouble.
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u/UfoAGogo 2h ago
There are rooms in hospitals for nurses to sleep in during their 24hr shifts. 24 hour shift doesn't mean they're awake for 24 hours, it just means they're at the hospital on call.
Shift changes result in more critical patient errors because it requires more debriefing of changing staff, less attention on patient, more nurse downtime, etc.
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u/scabs_in_a_bucket 1h ago
I looked this up - because statistically, a tired doctor is less dangerous to patients than a shift change where a new doctor has to be briefed on the patient. Basically, patient outcomes are best the less shift changes happen. Crazy stuff.
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u/Cyniikal 1h ago
I don't have a good answer for you, but...
My cousin has to do 7 12-hour shifts in a row on Thanksgiving week. Residency programs are fucking nightmares.
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u/IHeartBadCode 1h ago
Multiple reasons for this.
- 24/7 Continuous coverage makes staffing easier since hospitals run 24/7.
- Fewer handoffs which are where a long of dangers happen in case. Communication error is a leading cause of preventable medical errors and serious adverse events.
- Worker preferences for a majority of nurses is to work long shifts for three days and have four days off.
- Historical factors had doctors routinely working these schedules back in the day as part of the classic training model.
- Economic factors such as a nursing and doctor shortage in most areas.
Additionally, most hospitals do not have the person working for 12 to 24 hours continuously or with the usual two 15s and a lunch. It is usually a modified schedule that adapts to workload. Meals are typically eaten when things are stable or on the go. Longer shifts like 24 hour shifts, will usually include a nap period. However, the reality of getting uninterrupted sleep during a nap break is rare.
The maximum time for a shift is 24+4 hours. That is 24 hours of clinical care and up to 4 hours for handoff and administrative paperwork. The last four hours are strictly reserved for ensuring safety during handoff.
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u/Vomiting_Winter 23m ago edited 9m ago
Most errors happen during patient handoff. Working long shifts is actually safer for patients (and less healthy for healthcare workers) for that reason. It also helps patients develop more of a rapport with their caregivers. There are also some surgeries that just take a long fucking time, though generally support staff like nursing and scrub techs are allowed be relieved for breaks and be replaced entirely once their hours shift is over. It’s usually only the primary surgeon, and whatever MD/resident/PA who’s acting as first assist that’s beholden to stay, though personally, I’ve had someone come relieve me during extremely long surgeries. Honestly it’s quite rare to be working that long, for the obvious reasons that it can be dangerous for both the patient and provider
That being said, 12-hours shifts are much much more common.
In addition, people are often “on call” for 24+ hours, where you kinda treat the hospital like a hotel, can sleep, watch TV or whatever in your own little pseudo hotel room in the hospital, but will get paged if you’re needed. This is more common for MDs and mid levels in subspecialties where it doesn’t make financial sense to pay someone full salary to be working that whole time. Mileage can vary for call; I’ve had some shifts where I sleep and play videogames the whole time, and others where I was so tired and overworked, I probably was impaired on some level.
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u/BetweenTheRoots 20m ago
The Hospital I'll be at mostly just does 12 hour shifts, the people working 24 hours usually work that long because the Hospital wouldn't let them leave due to being short staffed. Nursing is in severe demand and Trump removed the loan programs Nursing students got either earlier this year or late last year, when he gutted all the loans to non-essential careers.
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u/No-Inevitable-2514 7m ago
They dont unless you live in some fucked up country with a pedo as the head of state....
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u/ApartmentAlive3540 3h ago
nurses work 24 hour shifts are encouraged to sleep for 8 hours, they even get a bed
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u/Independent_Pop_9987 3h ago
Because its about the money not about it actually caring. This is a job first only some actually treat it as something important. Dentists are the worst. Back to back surgeries no break in-between and rushed decisions. It goes straight out the windows when they choose efficiency over actual care.
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