Hos. Rules?

[DVT873]

Commercial drivers and pilots, train engineers, nuclear power plant operator's and I'm guessing several other industries all have HOS rules and regs in one form or another. Guess what industry/profession has none? Zip nada, nothing and in fact its members are proud of how long they can function without sleep. 18,24,36 hour shifts are common. It is a rite of passage for higher level members and is part of their training cycle when they first go live. A cycle that can be more than a year. NO mandatory stops, no resets, no 36 hours off. Know what it is? The medical profession. From doctors and surgeons down to LPN's. ER's are heavily staffed with residents, supervised by ER doctors and surgeons that are often equally sleep deprived. Of course their accidents and mistakes aren't as photogenic as a 60 vehicle pileup. Just think about doing an overhead after 30 hours of no sleep, with the engine running. Before I sound like to much of a jerk, my fathers life was saved by an extremely skilled surgeon who caught the case after literally stepping out of an operating room at the end of an 18 hour procedure. In less than an hour he was deep in my dads abdomen for the next 7 hours. I just find the extremes interesting.