The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented residents' work hour limitations in July 2003 to improve patient safety. Another important potential impact of more limited work hours is change in residents' career satisfaction. Virtually all studies of residents' career satisfaction, emotions and attitudes at mid year have demonstrated negative findings, many of which have been reported in studies from this institution and from collaborations with others [1-14]. Indeed, many authors have proposed that excessive work hours have been at least to a degree responsible for those negative findings [3,5,6,12-15]. Thus one would intuitively think that fewer hours of duty might result in more favorable feelings about career satisfaction, emotions and attitudes.
This study utilized a survey instrument, previously validated to demonstrate changes in attitudes and emotions with the Profile of Mood States [10], to evaluate satisfaction with career choice and emotional states among all residents and all faculty in one large academic medical center. Since 2002, the division of graduate medical education has surveyed all residents at Oregon Health & Science University utilizing the instrument to assess residents' levels of career satisfaction, attitudes and emotions. In July 2003, the institution implemented requirements to assure that residents complied with the ACGME duty hour limitations. To date there have been a small number of studies comparing various factors before and after intervention of the ACGME work hour limitations. None have included the entire resident cohort or provided multiple comparisons [16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. This study reports the results of a comparison of career satisfaction, emotional and attitudinal changes and self-reports of work hours among all residents between the survey in the 2002–03 academic year and the survey in the 2004–05 academic year, one and one-half years after implementation of the 80-hour work hour regulations.
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