A small but statistically significant number of patients die each year when junior doctors start work in August, an Imperial College London study suggests.
Researchers looked at 300,000 patients admitted as emergencies to English hospitals between 2000 and 2008.
They compared death rates between the first week of August, when new doctors arrive, and the previous week in July.
After adjusting for various factors, they report in PLoS One that the August patients were 6% more likely to die.
The period when an influx of newly qualified doctors enter the wards has sometimes been dubbed the “killing season”, but studies to establish whether there is any truth to this have been inconclusive.
The researchers from Imperial College London stressed they were unable to draw firm conclusions about the reasons for the increase, but that it was significant, if small.
Comparisons of the raw figures showed little difference, but when factors including age, sex, socio-economic deprivation and existing medical problems were taken into account, a discrepancy began to emerge.
Read more at BBC Health.
Tags: Juniors, Patient safety
