Long Working Hour Related Medical Errors and Patient Outcomes among Physicians: A Systematic Review

Wei-Yo Chao*, Shyr-Chyr Chen, Emma Geerdes, Jo-Ching Hsiung, Cheng-Han Li, Chien-Chang Lee, Haruna Tanoue and Mai Yamazaki

Long Working Hour Related Medical Errors and Patient Outcomes among Physicians: A Systematic Review

Research by Grober and Bohnen1 defined the medical error as “an act of omission
or commission in planning or execution that contributes or could contribute to an unintended result.

Similarly, the definition of an adverse event is an “unintended injury to
patients caused by medical management (rather than the underlying condition of the patient)
that results in measurable disability, prolonged hospitalization, or both.”

Not all medical errors necessarily result in adverse events and vice versa.
Any occurrence of a medical error or a preventable adverse event may reveal underlying
problems in any section before the final execution of a medical order.

Overworking, for instance, is regarded as the culprit for the incidence of medical
errors or adverse events. One prospective 2-session within-subject study shows
that residents with heavy night-call duty and placebo drug ingestion have cognitive
performance comparable to residents following light-call duty with alcohol intake,
blood-alcohol concentration falling in the range of 0.04~0.05 g%.2

An other comparative research indicated interns with significantly more weekly
working-hours and significantly less sleeping-hours had more attentional failure.

Furthermore, having discovered more recent articles, we aim to make an update of
the concerned topic by conducting a literature systematic review, investigating whether
long working hours and related factors will lead to higher medical-error rates or worsened patient outcomes.

Long Working Hour Related Medical Errors and Patient Outcomes among Physicians: A Systematic Review

Emerg Med Open J. 2019; 4(1): 25-35. doi: 10.17140/EMOJ-4-151

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