Even after considerable efforts to reduce the number of hours worked by medical residents in their training, a new study by the IOM has found that residents are still worked too hard and are dangerously sleep-deprived.

According to ScienceDaily, IOM is now recommending, in addition to the already existing 80-hour work week limitation created by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2008, that residents can only work a total of 16 hours without sleep, that they should have more days off, and that moonlighting should be kept to a minimum.

Why all this concern about sleepy residents? Well, not only is a zombie less likely to learn what they need to in their medical training, zombie-doctors are much more likely to cause medical errors than their well-rested counterparts.

Let’s hope that the IOMs recommendations will be heeded–there’s no need to overwork new docs and put patients at risk to simply staff the hospital better or to cut costs. Let’s put both the students and their patients first.

Summer Johnson, PhD