>I always figured the long shifts for doctors were some kind of hazing ritual.
>
>It means you don't need a night shift and the "medical team" is always together which equates to better training and was supposed to lead to better continuity of care.
>
>Those shifts became unworkable as medicine became more and more complex and hands-on. There have been quite a few papers about quality of care including some recent ones that suggest that patient mortality is not adversely affected by mega-shifts, but IME mistakes are more likely after so many hours.
>
>These days in the US I think 36-hour shifts and 80-hour weeks are a specified upper limit. Pansies. ;-)

They've started establishing so many limits - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residency_%28medicine%29#History_of_long_hours - that Dr. Zombie is almost on his (and nobody else's) way to losing identity by the end of the next century.