I picked up on news today that patients are more likely to die if they are admitted on a weekend compared to a weekday. This has come after a study was carried out in "the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16868428).
Let's look at the stats (all from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16868428);
1. Research was carried out by UCL (University College London), UEA (University of East Anglia) and Birmingham University.
2. It covered more than 14 million hospital admissions and 187,300 patients who died within 30 days of being admitted (during 2009/2010).
3. For every 100 deaths on a Wednesday there were 116 on a Sunday.
4. The results were consistent with data from 254 not-for-profit hospitals in the United States, which they also analysed.
So the obvious issue here is that more patients are dying on the weekend than in the weekday. This is maybe because of the lack of senior medical staff/consultants working on the weekend; as suggested by Professor Domenico Pagano on the BBC website. The lack of senior staff could have a major impact because of the experience that they offer in emergency situations; experience that can only come with time for junior doctors.
Another issue is what action to take now that this study has been carried out. What really needs to happen is that there needs to be more experienced doctors in the hospitals or close enough to the hospitals to be there in an emergency rather than on call (not very practical though). If there are more consultants consistently in the hospitals over the whole week, then the death rate should theoretically be lowered, based on the idea that experienced staff around means less deaths (but not no deaths).
It would be interesting to get some statistics on the mortality rates against the number of consultants and junior doctors working on the wards to see if there is a correlation between mortality rate and the experience of the staff on duty.
Let's look at the stats (all from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16868428);
1. Research was carried out by UCL (University College London), UEA (University of East Anglia) and Birmingham University.
2. It covered more than 14 million hospital admissions and 187,300 patients who died within 30 days of being admitted (during 2009/2010).
3. For every 100 deaths on a Wednesday there were 116 on a Sunday.
4. The results were consistent with data from 254 not-for-profit hospitals in the United States, which they also analysed.
So the obvious issue here is that more patients are dying on the weekend than in the weekday. This is maybe because of the lack of senior medical staff/consultants working on the weekend; as suggested by Professor Domenico Pagano on the BBC website. The lack of senior staff could have a major impact because of the experience that they offer in emergency situations; experience that can only come with time for junior doctors.
Another issue is what action to take now that this study has been carried out. What really needs to happen is that there needs to be more experienced doctors in the hospitals or close enough to the hospitals to be there in an emergency rather than on call (not very practical though). If there are more consultants consistently in the hospitals over the whole week, then the death rate should theoretically be lowered, based on the idea that experienced staff around means less deaths (but not no deaths).
It would be interesting to get some statistics on the mortality rates against the number of consultants and junior doctors working on the wards to see if there is a correlation between mortality rate and the experience of the staff on duty.
