Doctors are trained to believe that sleep deprivation isn't something that affects good doctors. During their residency, doctors routinely work 24 hour shifts. This goes back to William Halsted, who for all intents and purposes invented modern medical training at Hopkins. Halsted managed his always-on work ethic with his cocaine addiction, and drove his residents to the same extremes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/magazine/the-phantom-mena...
> Of course, the overworked, sleep-deprived doctor valiantly saving lives is an archetype that is deeply rooted in the culture of physician training, not to mention television hospital dramas. William Halsted, the first chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins in the 1890s and a founder of modern medical training, required his residents to be on call 362 days a year (only later was it revealed that Halsted fueled his manic work ethic with cocaine), and for the next 100 years the attitude of the medical establishment was more or less the same. Doctors, influenced by their own residency experiences, often see hospital hazing as the most effective way to learn the practice of medicine.
It's bullshit, it's killing patients, it's ruining lives, everyone knows about it, yet no one does anything, because "it's the way we've always done it". If a doctor has been awake longer than 18 hours, and a patient dies on the table, they should be charged with manslaughter, traditions be damned.