When a hospital halved the length of surgeons’ shifts, patients not only experienced a dramatic decrease in surgical infections, but they also had shorter hospital stays, a US study has found.

Traditionally, US hospitals assigned general surgeons to 24-hour on-call schedules, which often saw them operating after being on duty for 18-20 hours, the researchers said. 

They looked at what happened when the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, in Lubbock, Texas moved to a model capping surgeon shifts at 12 hours for covering surgical emergencies. 

Researchers compared outcomes for patients with acute appendicitis, a common surgical emergency, cared for under each system during the transition period between September 2017 and June 2018.