Overtime and shift practices are becoming more visible job safety issues in this age of lean and mean, high-performance business operations. The most recent example is a petition presented to OSHA on behalf of more than 40,000 physicians-in-training asking the agency to put limits on the hours they work.
Medical residents regularly clock 95 hours, and as many as 136 out of 168 hours in a week, according to the petition filed by Public Citizen, a health advocacy group, and backed by the Committee of Interns and Residents and the American Medical Student Association.