Liability of the sleep-deprived resident.

摘要

On July 14, 1997, after completing her 36-hour work shift at a large academic medical center in Chicago, a first-year internal medicineresident got into her automobile to drive home. En route, the resident fell asleep behind the wheel of her car and struck a car driven by a 23-year-old woman. The woman sustained a head injury that left her permanently disabled.The injured woman (plaintiff) filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the medical center alleging that the center "knew or should have known that the resident had worked 34 of the 36 hours she had been on duty and that it knew or should have known that the resident therefore was tired from the excessive hours she worked and left the hospital with impaired judgment because she was deprived of sleep." The plaintiff maintained that the medical center had been negligent by breaching a duty it had "to prevent the injury caused by the resident's condition" [1, 2]. The trial court judge dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that the medical center owedno legal duty to the plaintiff. The plaintiff then appealed the trial court's dismissal to the Illinois Appellate Court.