Surgical Resident Duty Hours

To the Editor: As Bilimoria et al. (Feb. 25 issue) 1 note in their article on the Flexibility in Duty Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees (FIRST) Trial, the 2011 duty-hour reforms of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) created controversy in the medical community. 2 – 5 Several groups have questioned the benefits of these reforms. 1 – 4 Important to the controversy is underreporting of duty hours by residents. 2 , 5 Underreporting may be a significant source of bias in studies of ACGME duty-hour reforms. 1 , 3 , 4 To examine underreporting, we surveyed general surgery residents in the United States using methods based on . . .