An Australian Medical Association survey of almost 1500
doctors found 53 per cent were working hours that put them at high or
significant risk of fatigue, including one doctor who worked a 43-hour
shift and another who worked a 120-hour week.
AMA vice-president Geoffrey Dobb said the results were
concerning in light of evidence that a person's performance after being
awake for 17 hours was impaired to the same extent as if they had a
blood-alcohol concentration greater than .05 per cent.
The percentage of doctors found to be at high or significant
risk of fatigue - based on factors including total weekly hours, length
of shifts and on-call commitments - improved from 78 per cent in 2001,
and 62 per cent in 2006.
Fifth-year obstetrics trainee Will Milford, who is
chairman of the AMA Council of Doctors in Training, said anecdotal
evidence suggested that the safety of doctors themselves was at risk.
''You get stories from junior doctors all the time who'll be
on their way home from a very long shift and they'll be falling asleep
at traffic lights,'' he said.
1 comment:
Quoting an article from the Medical Journal of Australia, https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2007/187/9/challenges-health-and-health-care-australia
"Quality and safety
Medical errors in Australia cost over $1 billion — possibly $2 billion — annually.15 The Quality in Australian Health Care Study found that about half of these errors were potentially preventable.16
Australia has not come to terms with medical error, neither recording its occurrence nor adapting systems from other high-risk industries, such as nuclear power and aviation, to reduce it. Rigid, fault-seeking, blame-allocating cultures are tolerated, even enshrined, in professional hierarchies. There is a new agency for quality and safety, built on a succession of preceding committees and councils, but its effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated (Box 4).17
We do not know whether a decade of quality and safety activity has produced improvements; there are insufficient data at state or national level, in the public or private sector, or for in-hospital or out-of-hospital care.18"
A fairly obvious and relatively inexpensive fix would be to make sure that the people delivering health care get enough sleep.
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