• Surena Namdari, Keith D Baldwin, Barbara Weinraub, and Samir Mehta.
• Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital of University of Pennsylvania, 2 Silverstein, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
• Clin. Orthop. Relat. Res. 2010 Aug 1;468(8):2278-83.

BackgroundSince the inception of resident work-hour regulations, there has been considerable concern regarding the influence of decreased work hours on graduate medical education. In particular, it is unclear whether implementation of work-hour restrictions has influenced resident academic performance as defined by quantity of peer-reviewed publications while participating in graduate medical education.Questions/PurposesWe determined the impact of work-hour changes on resident involvement in the number of published clinical studies, laboratory research, case reports, and review articles.MethodsWe conducted a PubMed literature search of 139 consecutive orthopaedic surgery residents (789 total resident-years) at one institution from academic years 1995-1996 to 2008-2009. This represented a continuous timeline before and after implementation of work-hour restrictions. The number of resident publications before and after implementation of work-hour changes was compared.ResultsThere was a greater probability of peer review authorship in any given resident-year after work-hour changes than before. Average publications per resident-year increased for total articles, clinical articles, case reports, and reviews. There was an increased rate of publications in which the resident was the first author.ConclusionsSince implementation of work-hour changes, total resident publications and publications per resident-year have increased.

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