I'm going to take a different tack: How about we stop hazing medical professionals at the beginning of their career and only ask them to work 8 hour shifts with an appropriate amount of time off until their next shift?
Along with lmm's comment, where would all the extra doctors come from? You can't cut hours worked in half (or close to it) without doubling your staff to meet the demand. US hospitals (especially ERs) are already running over patient capacity in many US cities
Simple, make the hell of residency go away, and allow more foreign doctors to come in to US and practice after going through a reasonable residency program. I have known very smart and competent Russian and Ukrainian doctors who work as lab employees because they are not allowed to practice medicine here.
Great idea. But how do we get to there from here? Particularly when doctors' professional bodies are large, powerful, and full of people who are convinced that that never did them any harm?
