Osmania General Hospital has capped the duty hours of junior residents and interns at 48 hours a week, introducing structured shifts and one uninterrupted weekly day off after concerns over uneven workloads and prolonged working hours.
The hospital superintendent’s circular, dated October 27, directs all heads of departments to implement and monitor the revised schedule. It requires junior residents and interns to work two 12-hour shifts a week, while duty on the remaining four working days is limited to six hours a day.
The circular also requires every junior resident and intern to receive one full day off each week. Heads of departments have been asked to review and submit revised monthly duty rosters to the superintendent’s office by the 28th of every month. Attendance is to be monitored by the unit chief or a faculty representative.
OGH superintendent Dr Rakesh Sahay said there had been no uniformity in workload and duty hours between departments. Junior doctors and their parents had submitted representations seeking regulation of working hours, he said.
“Some departments have heavy workloads while others have less work. It is better to have a rational and uniform system in which work is divided among everyone,” Sahay said, according to Deccan Chronicle.
The revised system follows concerns raised over long working hours among postgraduate medical students. N. Chandrakanth, president of the OGH Junior Doctors Association, said the earlier unwritten practice allowed junior doctors to work for up to 72 hours. In departments such as orthopaedics, junior residents sometimes worked for more than 72 hours without a clear schedule for rest or sleep, he said.
Chandrakanth said the new arrangement would allow departments to plan shifts and distribute duties more evenly. The association has urged all departments to implement the norms and asked other government hospitals to consider adopting a similar system.
The move comes after a suicide was reported four months ago, Chandrakanth said. The report did not provide further details about the incident. The concerns place duty-hour management within the wider administrative challenge of running public hospitals with different workloads across departments while maintaining continuous patient services.
Telangana Medical Council member G. Srinivas described the decision as an initiative aligned with relevant National Medical Commission postgraduate medical education regulations and Government of India guidelines. N. Karthik of HRDA also welcomed the circular, saying it could help protect doctors’ physical and mental well-being, prevent burnout and support better patient care.
The immediate implementation responsibility rests with OGH department heads, unit chiefs and faculty representatives. Their monthly rosters and attendance monitoring will determine how the 48-hour schedule is applied across the hospital’s departments.
