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Long Working Hours and Pregnancy Complications among Residents

Abeer Arain

Residents of Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology work around 80 hours per week in their residency years. Residency training is physically demanding and highly stressful, and can become even difficult if the female resident is pregnant. It is a well-known physically strenuous occupation that has also been suspected to show negative pregnancy outcomes if the resident becomes pregnant during her residency years. The long working hours not only increases the chance of pre-term delivery, but also of other adverse outcomes such as abruptio placenta, low birth weight, intra-uterine growth retardation. From the last decade, between the years 1990-2000, the number of female medical students and these female residents has shown a dramatic increase, from 30% to almost 40%. Because of the pressure of increasing age, and fertility concerns, most of the physicians choose child bearing during their early residency years. This review article expands the understanding of long working hours during residency training and its association with pregnancy complications and adverse pregnancy outcomes. A design of a retrospective study is also proposed in the article, to determine the association of adverse pregnancy outcomes among residents according to the latest ACGME work hour guidelines.