One of the barriers that has repeatedly derailed attempts to address the issue of work-hour restrictions is the long hours worked by resident physicians during training. It is very difficult for specialists in occupational health — who champion workplace safety issues ranging from hearing protection to exposure to chemical carcinogens — to argue that sixteen-hour work shifts are hazardous when physicians routinely care for patients working twenty-four-hour shifts. Though a consolidated episode of ten hours of sleep restores performance to baseline levels for a few hours, those with a history of chronic sleep loss deteriorate much more rapidly as the number of consecutive hours of wakefulness increases, particularly overnight. Once physician work-hour reform has been implemented successfully in the United States, it will serve as the foundation for implementation of safer work schedules in a wide variety of industries.