I don't know, but least doctors have a reason for 30 hour shifts: continuity of care improves patient outcome. If they are rested but keep switching doctors, every shift you get a new doctor who's got to read up on you from scratch.
Every time my wife or I or my kid have been in the hospital, we've been there for more than 30 hours. So the problem still exists - someone still has to read up on our situation. I'd much rather those notes be written down by someone who isn't on their 26th hour awake.
It's obviously statistical. It exists, yes, but to a lesser extent.
Unfortunately the definition of a good filter is going to vary as much as workflows from hospital to hospital.
People in favor of longer shifts (read: docs who are long out of training and hospital admins that rely on residents as some of their most cost-effective man-hours) argue this shows that shorter shifts do not provide patient benefit, so fuck it.
Those in favor of shorter shifts (read: pretty much everyone else) argue that if it's all equal for patients, we shouldn't be torturing residents (they're people, too), and that what this really shows is that the hand-off process is shit and needs to be improved upon.
More sleep and better hand-offs are the road to better patient outcomes and happier (or at least sane) residents.
And it's worth noting that the fight for sane hours has, thus far, only extended to first-year residents. Second+ are still dogmeat.
...and that's the literature position. From first-hand experience, though, I can tell you true horror stories. Mistakes due to hand-offs can be reduced; mistakes because one of my colleagues had a dissociative episode during a way-too-long period without sleep is harder to catch. But no one discloses lapses in sanity during these studies.
Hand-off also seems like a thing that could be improved in many different ways, while fatigue is driven by fundamental limits of human physiology.
The issue with hand-offs comes down to trying to transfer too much information, too quickly. Fixing this is primarily a funding issue - everything else is trying to make up a fundamental resource scarcity with operational improvements.
If you don't want an exhausted doc, you have to tackle it at the policy level. There are advocacy groups working on this, and the proper targets are your legislators and state medical societies.
People have no idea what the quality of our work is: bad, good, or in-between. You have neither the expertise nor the information by which to judge. The Chief Quality Officer (and former anesthesiologist) at (major academic medical center) once told me, "I have access to more quality data than absolutely anyone else in this hospital ... and I still have no idea who the good surgeons are and who the bad ones are. I haven't known that since I left working in the operating room every day, when I actually saw them all work day after day." What he doesn't know, you certainly do not.
You know all those posts here about how managers have unrealistic expectations, and constantly misunderstand what software devs actually do? It's like that, only moreso.
Source: Had friends in Med School some years ago.
Here's are a couple of data points though:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/02/02/46524860...
Here's the original source: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1515724?query=fea...
This is brought up in every such discussion. Is it really true that US and UK hospitals have better outcomes than EU/Scandinavian ones where the EU working time directive is taken at least a bit more seriously?