Your comment sounds reasonable, but it doesn't allow for nuance.
If a hellish residency improves patient outcomes by 0.1%, at the expense of every single resident suffering twice as much as they need to (and likely leading to some stimulant addictions and deaths among the resident/doctor population), that's not a fair tradeoff.
Medical workers don't exist solely to sacrifice themselves for others; they are humans also and their needs should be weighed as important like everyone else's.
As it so happens I think some of the strain of medical residency is related to supply shortages in the health care industry. If it's not crystal clear that working 80+ hours per week is necessary to significantly improve patient outcomes, and it is clear that working 80+ hours per week makes a lot of people choose other careers (limiting supply artificially), then reform here is imperative.
If a hellish residency improves patient outcomes by 0.1%, at the expense of every single resident suffering twice as much as they need to (and likely leading to some stimulant addictions and deaths among the resident/doctor population), that's not a fair tradeoff.
Medical workers don't exist solely to sacrifice themselves for others; they are humans also and their needs should be weighed as important like everyone else's.
As it so happens I think some of the strain of medical residency is related to supply shortages in the health care industry. If it's not crystal clear that working 80+ hours per week is necessary to significantly improve patient outcomes, and it is clear that working 80+ hours per week makes a lot of people choose other careers (limiting supply artificially), then reform here is imperative.