Follow Following Unfollow Pending Disabled. A , Cardiology (Cardiovascular Disease), answered. Resident doctors and most starting doctors work an average of 105 hours a week. To stop (or at least reduce) some of that madness, The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (which accredits 7,800 residency programs in the United States) ruled that residents must not work more than 80 hours in a week or more than 24 hours in a row and must get 1 day off a week.