Health Highlights: Dec. 3, 2008

"They are breaking a new path here," Dr. David J. Rothman, president of the nonprofit Institute on Medicine as a Profession, told The New York Times. The Columbia University-based group studies potential conflicts of interest.

In the United States, doctors' and scientists' connections to industry are often kept secret, a practice that can harm the integrity of medical research and patient care, according to critics.

The Cleveland Clinic's move was praised by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R- Iowa), who's introduced legislation to force drug and medical device makers to disclose payments they make to doctors.

"Patients deserve easy access to information about their doctors'relationships with drug companies and the Cleveland Clinic is making that possible," Grassley said in a statement, the Times reported.

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Report Urges Further Measures to Help Medical Residents

More needs to be done to ease the workload of doctors-in-training in the United States, according to an Institute of Medicine report released Tuesday.

Five years ago, new regulations capped the working hours of young doctors to about 80 hours per week. The new report offers recommendations to further improve conditions for overworked medical residents doing on-the-job training, the Associated Press reported.

The Institute of Medicine said:

Residents working the maximum 30-hour shift should get an uninterrupted five-hour sleep break after 16 hours.There should be better overlapping of schedules during shift changes to reduce chances for error as one doctor transfers patients' care to the next doctor.Experienced physicians should more closely supervise residents.The number of mandatory days off each month should be increased and the number of hours between shifts should be extended depending on how long the resident worked, during day or night.

Sleep deprivation can cause fatigue that leads to serious medical errors. Before new caps on resident hours were issued in 2003, some residents in specialties could average 110 hours of work a week, the Associated Press reported.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education didn't immediately say if it would follow the Institute of Medicine recommendations.