Tired and distracted doctors make more errors
Safety and quality research findings
Next time you rush to the emergency department, cross your fingers that the doctor who examines you doesn’t get interrupted often and has had a good night’s sleep.
New research shows this could mean your doctor makes fewer errors. Doctors who had less than six hours’ sleep were 15 times more likely to make a clinical error than those who’d had a normal night’s rest, a study by Macquarie University has found.
A research team led by Macquarie Professor Johanna Westbrook took established research from the lab and tested it directly in the hospital. Researchers observed 36 doctors in an emergency department over 120 hours and recorded their tasks, and how often they were interrupted or had to multitask.
“We were interested to see what happened when we did the research directly on people in the real world, in an emergency room – from our knowledge this is the first time it’s been done,” says Westbrook, Director of the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research at Macquarie University's Australian Institute of Health Innovation.
Reprinted from MQ Lighthouse.
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Professor Johanna Westbrook