Accidents happen. Often when we are tired, overwhelmed with too much information and too much to do we make mistakes. Many of us work long hours, interacting with complex machinery and in noisy environments. Few of us, however, are required to work 36 or more hours in a row, with little or no sleep. Physicians do this on a regular basis and patient safety is at risk as a result.
Why does this happen? Many years ago I asked a senior staff physician who worked in a large metropolitan hospital this question. He told me there were three reasons: (1). A physician needs to learn how to make decisions no matter how they feel physically (2). We are short-staffed and (3). It was done to us before therefore it will also be done to those who come after us. I’ve since heard another reason: the more hours you work the more opportunity you have to learn new things. I don’t know how effective this latter strategy is for physicians-in-training. Or whether it is used as a fear tactic. For example, someone might be told: “if you don’t treat enough cases of X you will not have enough knowledge to pass the board exam in your specialty”.
This clip (1:23 minutes) from the television show “ER” in which Dr. Elizabeth Corday explains at a weekly M&M (Morbidity and Mortality) meeting reasons why and ways in which the system could be changed.
Her concluding marks are quite poignant. I don’t think the situation is much different now then it was when this show aired in 1998. Or when I asked a physician ten years previous to that. But I do think her point is valid. Who would want to fly in a plane in which an air traffic controller co-coordinating its take-off and landing had worked 36 hours in a row without sleep?
But I think the real question is whether you would want to fly in plane with a pilot who had worked 36 hours without sleep. However that would never happen. Pilots (and the airline industry) know that if they had people flying jets for many hours in a row they would likely make a mistake. The plane could crash and many lives would be lost. Including the pilot. Not quite the same scenario for a physician. Maybe the rules regarding work hours would change if their lives and not just those of the patient were also in danger. For this to be achieved we need more collaboration between everyone involved in providing care.
