Abstract
Introduction: The introduction of the European Working Time directive 2003/88/EC has led to a reduction of the working hours with distinct impact on the clinical and surgical activity of neurosurgical residents in training. Methods: A survey was performed among European neurosurgical residents between 06/2014 and 03/2015.
Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between responder-specific variables (e.g., age, gender, country, postgraduate year (PGY)) and outcome (e.g., working time). Conclusions: The results of this survey on > 500 European neurosurgical residents clearly prove that less than 40 % conform with the 48-h week as claimed by the WTD2003/88/EC.
Still, more than half of them would chose to work even more hours/week if their clinical education were to improve; probably due to subjective impression of insufficient training.
