First, hours were reduced to 80 hours. Now there’s talk of part-time, or flexible resident hours. The lifestyle takeover of medicine continues.

Update:
Bard-Parker chimes in:

So does this paper offer a solution for a problem that does not exist? Maybe maybe not. With close to eighty percent of chief residents pursuing fellowship training of one form or another maybe extending the training would encourage more residents to stick with general surgery. I doubt it though, while the residency my be part-time one would be hard-pressed to find a part time private practice job right now. Maybe not so hard in the future. The patient population wants knowledgeable, well-rested, and attentive physicians. With the 80-hour workweek limits in training and the habits learned under that system spreading to the “real world”, two out of three isn’t bad.