Death Rates Up When Junior Doctors Arrive
Type: Union News Subject: International
10 November 2009
National Health Service hospital deaths in the UK rise on the day junior doctors join wards, a study has found.
Each year on the first Wednesday in August, a team of newly-qualified junior doctors arrives on the wards. And on this day, the number of deaths goes up by an average of 6%.
Although researchers suspected this happened, this is the first time it has been established in Britain. A similar effect has been recorded in the US (known as the ‘July phenomenon’), but previous studies only looked at a small number of hospitals.
'Each year, a team of newly-qualified junior doctors arrives on the wards. And on this day, the number of deaths goes up by an average of 6%'.
Researchers from the Dr Foster unit and the department of acute medicine at Imperial College London cast their net much wider, examining data from nearly 300,000 patients in 175 hospital trusts between 2000 and 2008. They compared death rates on the first Wednesday in August with the last Wednesday in July and found the difference was most marked in medical cases, such as heart attacks and strokes, where there was an 8% increase in deaths. There was no difference in surgical cases.
The researchers said it was too early to determine the reason for the rise in death rates.
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