Impact of Protected Sleep Period for Internal Medicine Interns on Overnight Call on Depression, Burnout, and Empathy

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Patient safety and sleep experts advocate a protected sleep period for residents., OBJECTIVE: We examined whether interns scheduled for a protected sleep period during overnight call would have better end-of-rotation assessments of burnout, depression, and empathy scores compared with interns without protected sleep periods and whether the amount of sleep obtained during on call predicted end-of-rotation assessments., METHODS: We conducted a randomized, controlled trial with internal medicine interns at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center (PVAMC) and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in academic year 2009-2010. Four-week blocks were randomly assigned to either overnight call permitted under the 2003 duty hour standards or a protected sleep period from 12:30 am to 5:30 am. Participants wore wrist actigraphs. At the beginning and end of the rotations, they completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-HSS), and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)., RESULTS: A total of 106 interns participated. There were no significant differences between groups in end-of-rotation BDI-II, MBI-HSS, or IRI scores at either location (P>.05). Amount of sleep while on call significantly predicted lower MBI-Emotional Exhaustion (P