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Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal
antdude writes "A British Medical Journal (BMJ) research report says that 'Surgeries on Friday Are More Frequently Fatal ... compared to those who opt for really bad Mondays, Britons who have a planned surgery on a Friday are 44 percent more likely to die. And the few patients who had a leisurely weekend surgery saw that number jump to 82 percent. The skeleton staff working on weekends might be to blame.'"
It's like how cars made on Friday have more defects. People are tired after a long week and just want the day to end so they can get the weekend party started.
I would assume urgent surgeries have higher fatality rates, and they are the ones that may get crammed in on the weekends and Friday nights.
That said, there might be some causal relation (but the study is just correctional), and it makes sense to look into it. However, currently there isn't enough evidence to make me try and avoid late week surgery.
On Question Time Anna Soubry (Under-Secretary of State for Health) said that some doctors schedule more at-risk surgeries on a Friday because then they will be able to deal with the patient during the weekend when they don't have surgeries planned. You do need to be careful when you want to find explanations for statistics like these. Your immediate reaction can easily be wrong.
Approximately 2/5 (two fifths!) of sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays! Obviously the implication is that the slack workers aren't really sick, but are taking the day off to coincide with the weekend!
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I'm not going to book surgery on any day other than a Wednesday. Unless I want to die I guess.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
The skeleton staff working on weekends might be to blame.
Smivs on the intertubes!
No, you can thank him yourself... you'll be seeing him soon... if you've been good.
Several years ago, after a stupid table-saw accident and an ER visit, I went to my doctor to have the wound check for healing. The ER nurse had clumsily wrapped my thumb and fingers with gauze (I came up with a much more elegant method, which looked neater, stayed on better, and could be accomplished with one hand -- but I digress...) Anyhow, she had also not put non-stick pads on the wounds before gauzing. The blood and pus had seeped into the gauze and hardened, making it difficult and painful to remove. After nearly two hours of soaking in warm water, trimming away parts of crusty gauze and repeating, only about half the gauze had been removed. It was 5 p.m., and the doctor came in, told me to clench my teeth, and ripped the rest off. It wasn't medically a bad thing to do, and I was glad to be out of there too, but the only reason he resorted to that was because it was quittin' time.
Most hospitals have restrictions on non- emergency surgeries over the weekend, because they have very limited staff.
However, surgeons are very powerful (especially those who do elective surgeries that bring in big $) and they often prefer to schedule surgeries around their own convenience rather than that of their patients or other hospital staff.
Stanford hip replacements are a known example.
Lots of people have pointed out already that more complicated surgeries are scheduled for Fridays so doctors are fully available to deal with complications.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Maybe they injure themselves worse on the weekend?
I admit that I didn't read the article but I must point out that there is just seven days and one day must be the worst and one day must be the best. I happens to be the friday in the UK, it might be some other day in another country but there must always be one certain day that is the worst. Since there's only seven possible outcomes but an uncountable ammount of factors going in, good luck to figuring out what exacly is goong on.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
I'll bet it has something to do with the fact that doctors like to take Fridays off. So by extension if they are doing surgery on a Friday (or god help you a weekend), whatever the issue is it must be life threatening, and most likely far more severe than a surgery that can wait until Monday: Hence more likely to get you killed, no matter the skill level of the surgeons or their team.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
In a shocking statistic, 40% of sickdays are taken on Fridays or Mondays... clearly slackers trying to extend their weekends.
We should try and stamp out this scourge on productivity everywhere!
Autocorrect
The study only looked at elective surgery, not urgent surgery.
Good, since those are the ones we can best change the outcome of by rescheduling them.
Complications can arise during recovery, especially after a complicated surgery or if the hospital isn't perfect. If complications arise on a weekend, the doctors and staff who could not get the time off are the ones working, and the staff are less willing to call the doctors. (These are generalizations, and of course vary from hospital to hospital.)
This is the exact reason why you NEVER schedule elective surgery on major holidays or between Christmas and New Years.
"A British Medical Journal (BMJ) research report says that 'Surgeries on Friday Are More Frequently Fatal ... compared to those who opt for really bad Mondays, Britons who have a planned surgery on a Friday are 44 percent more likely to die. And the few patients who had a leisurely weekend surgery saw that number jump to 82 percent. The skeleton staff working on weekends might be to blame.'"
You really need to decide where the quotes are supposed to go in this summary. I very much doubt that a BMJ report would ever use such glib phrases as "really bad Mondays" and "leisurely weekend surgery."
In fact I don't think anything in TFS has actually been quoted from the report, beyond individual words or numbers. So why is it in quotes? Or are they just random apostrophes?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Need to look at the death rate by day of week for the general population. If people in general are more likely to die on these days, then a higher mortality rate in surgery on these days is not as surprising as you may think.
My google-fu is lacking at the moment, but I seem to recall reading a study a few years ago which showed that among the general population there's a higher mortality rate on Fridays and Saturdays, too. Unfortunately, right now all I'm finding is a 1983 study done in Australia which showed that the perinatal and infant mortality rates follow this pattern.
when on the 13th and the surgeon's name is Jason ...
I had a similar thought, but the linked study indicates that it focused only on elective surgery, so I don't believe surgeries related to accident or recent injury were counted.
The paper seems to conclude that the weekend staff being smaller and less experienced may be the cause.
Doctor: Sir, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Your heart is going to explode. We'll need to perform emergency surgery right away.
Patient: But....today is saturday! I don't wanna die - can it wait until monday?
Doctor: If you don't have it now there is a a 75% chance you will not live until monday
Patient: yea...I think I'll take my chances and wait until monday thank you very much
I am IT staff at a hospital and end up working on the in-suite PCs alot since coworkers don't like being in a room with a patient open. The surgery schedule gets busier throughout the week with the busiest day being Thursday; at my hospital that is really the "Friday" of the OR. For reasons mentioned above only cases of eminent need are scheduled for Fridays and nothing on the weekend. If you are having surgery on a Friday or the weekend you are in a fairly grave state already. Also: All doctors, surgeons and staff do rotations and coverage; so "shitty doctors and nurses and up working the weekends" is not a reality.
The skeleton staff working on weekends might be to blame
Yeah, but what if it isn't an orthopaedic surgery?
If we're talking about small rural or local hospitals, sure -- in part because these hospitals are at most feeders that stabilize patients before sending them to major hospitals. There's a world of difference between the rural hospital that's close to the mountain where I ski patrol and a Level 1 trauma (or cardiac, or stroke) center. The local hospital (which bills itself as a "regional medical center") doesn't even have an orthopaedic surgeon on duty on weekends. In contrast, less than 200 miles away are four cities with Level 1 trauma centers (altogether more than seven hospitals) including Barrows Neurological Hospital, Mayo Hospital, two university hospitals, and a top-notch limb reattachment hospital.
Having been married to a nurse who worked at most of the big ones, I can tell y'all that the staffing doesn't thin out on weekends.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm not surprised about the infant mortality rates. Our son was delivered in hospital. My wife nearly didn't get anesthetics because the doctor had to leave for the weekend. Also, after 17:00 'o clock the number of available medical staff dropped drastically. There were, fortunately, no complications right then but if she had had them at 17:10, the doctor would have already left.
Stuff like that (not enough people on call) was identified as a factor in the infant mortality in The Netherlands last year. I don't know how it translates to Australia but if they have a lot of people delivering in hospitals, this might be a factor there as well.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Another example of why robotic surgeons should be a long term goal.
If you get a surgery on a weekend, likely there was a reason why it could not be postponed to Monday. No wonder that many of the surgeries that could not be postponed end badly.
And maybe the same thing applies to Fridays to some degree. Less critical surgeries are probably pushed to Monday, to avoid post-op care during the weekend if possible.
Guess what, surgeons are more likely to schedule difficult cases on a Friday, so the patients get longer in intensive care with the surgeon on call, as he isn't in surgery at the weekend so can be on hand to help out. More dying is purely a result of their cases being more difficult. Also, we're talking about 0.6% here.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Unsurprising. Privatize all healthcare and providers will have to compete for quality.
-- Jimtown Kelly
I'm amazed: it seems everyone missed the key cause.
How would you not see higher fatalities with a skeleton crew?
at least to /. readers who seem to think that Friday surgery victims are 44 percent more likely to die than ... well who?
I assume that this is compared to other people having surgery.
So if those people have a .01% chance of dying, the Friday people have a .0144% chance of dying.
Does that take some of the drama out of the story or do you still not understand it?
...omphaloskepsis often...