In 2003, in the face of errors and accidents caused by medical and surgical trainees, the American Council of Graduate Medical Education mandated a reduction in resident work hours to eighty per week. Over the course of two and a half years spent observing residents and staff surgeons trying to implement this new regulation, Katherine C. Kellogg discovered that resistance to it was both strong and successful in fact, two of the three hospitals she studied failed to make the change. "Challenging Operations" takes up the apparent paradox of medical professionals resisting reforms designed to...