Sherrie
15-12-2006, 06:17 AM
Study links errors by doctors to long hours
The findings were based on a survey of 2,737 interns of various medical specialties in U.S. hospitals.
"We found that for every 100 interns working for a year, they on average made 200 significant medical errors, 20 significant medical errors that caused a preventable injury to their patients and 5 serious medical errors that caused the preventable deaths of their patients," Dr. Charles Czeisler, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
If these findings are applied to all 100,000 young doctors working such schedules at U.S. hospitals, he said, that means there are nearly 100,000 significant medical mistakes, tens of thousands of preventable injuries to patients and thousands of preventable deaths that are fatigue-related every year :eek:
Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-12-13T000138Z_01_N12352602_RTRUKOC_0_US-DOCTORS-FATIGUE.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2)
The findings were based on a survey of 2,737 interns of various medical specialties in U.S. hospitals.
"We found that for every 100 interns working for a year, they on average made 200 significant medical errors, 20 significant medical errors that caused a preventable injury to their patients and 5 serious medical errors that caused the preventable deaths of their patients," Dr. Charles Czeisler, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
If these findings are applied to all 100,000 young doctors working such schedules at U.S. hospitals, he said, that means there are nearly 100,000 significant medical mistakes, tens of thousands of preventable injuries to patients and thousands of preventable deaths that are fatigue-related every year :eek:
Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-12-13T000138Z_01_N12352602_RTRUKOC_0_US-DOCTORS-FATIGUE.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2)