Don’t go to hospital when the new doctors start
A study of Britain’s National Health Service has revealed there is one day in the year when death rates go up by an average of 6%, reports the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.
In a finding that has implications for hospitals around the world, that day is also when the wards welcome a new intake of junior doctors.
On the first Wednesday in August every year, a freshly qualified set of junior doctors arrive on Britain’s wards. Pristine and eager and brilliant they no doubt are, but while they are finding their way around, something unexplained and slightly perplexing appears to happen.
Researchers from the Dr Foster Unit and the Department of Acute Medicine at Imperial College London say there has been a suspicion for years that more people die on the day the new doctors arrive, but for the first time they have established that it happens – although they say the rise in deaths is very small.
They do not blame the doctors’ inexperience or confusion, and say it is also possible only the severest cases are admitted in that week because of the changeover.
“A similar effect has been recorded in the US (known as the ‘July phenomenon’),” the researchers wrote.
