Medical Errors and Work Hours

A prospective, randomized study comparing the rates of serious medical errors made by interns while they were working according to a traditional schedule with extended (24 hours or more) work shifts every other shift while they were working a schedule that eliminated extended work shifts and reduced the number of hours worked per week. Two physicians who were unaware of the interns' schedule assignments independently rated each incident. Interns made 35.9 percent more serious medical errors during the traditional schedule than during the intervention schedule. The total rate of serious errors on the critical care units was 22.0 percent higher during the traditional schedule than during the intervention schedule. Interns made 20.8 percent more serious medication errors during the traditional schedule than during the intervention schedule and 5.6 times as many serious diagnostic errors during the traditional schedule as during the intervention schedule.

Brooklyndodger thinks that if someone designed a work schedule to cause medical errors, you couldn't do much better than current practices in the US health care industry. Instead of cutting off victims' rights to malpractice suits, we suggest President Bush devote some energy to making hospitals attend to issues which create the errors and victims.

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N Engl J Med. 2004 Oct 28;351(18):1838-48.
Effect of reducing interns' work hours on serious medical errors in intensive care units.

Landrigan CP, Rothschild JM, Cronin JW, Kaushal R, Burdick E, Katz JT, Lilly CM, Stone PH, Lockley SW, Bates DW, Czeisler CA.Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. clandrigan@rics.bwh.harvard.