“Killing season,” a term used to describe the time when junior doctors take over at hospitals, was thought to be just an unsettling joke. However, British researchers found hospital mortality rates rise by 6 per cent on the first Wednesday in August. Perhaps not coincidentally, that is also the day newly qualified doctors, fresh from medical school, are let loose on the wards of [England's National Health Service] hospitals [Daily Mail]. There could be lots of explanations for the increase, so the authors say their data doesn’t mean people should shy away from hospitals during this week, but they do say the increase is statistically significant. The report was published recently in the journal PLoS ONE.
To arrive at their result, an Imperial College team looked at 300,000 emergency patients admitted to English hospitals between 2000 to 2008. They compared death rates between the first week of August, when new doctors arrive, and the previous week in July [BBC News]. The study’s authors note that past studies looking at mortality rates before and after junior doctors take over did not find any difference. The results could be due to the different types of patients being admitted, but if it turns out to that there is some merit to the “killing season” myth, it could have large implications for how young doctors are turned loose.
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Image: flickr / [lauren nelson]
Under a new law, California hospitals are supposed to report all serious medical errors to the state, and the first batch includes stories that will scare anyone with a looming hospital admission date. [D]uring a 10-month period ending in May, doctors performed the wrong surgical procedure, operated on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient 41 times, records show. During the same period, hospitals reported that foreign objects were left in surgical patients 145 times [AP].
Officially called “adverse events,” those accidents are also known as “never events” because they are considered preventable, and many safety experts say they should never happen [Los Angeles Times]. The new disclosures listed 1,002 cases that caused serious medical harm; under the new law, the public health department must begin to post all these cautionary tales on the Internet by 2015.
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Little electronic chips called radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs) have been popping up everywhere in hospitals, and for the most part that’s a very good thing. The small devices are attached to all sorts of objects to help hospital staff keep track of their equipment–the chips are even implanted in surgical sponges so doctors can make sure they haven’t left any inside their patients.
But a new study suggests that RFIDs may not be entirely safe in a hospital setting, and that the wafer-thin chips could interfere with critical hospital equipment like pacemakers and mechanical ventilators. When a team of Dutch researchers tested the chips’ effects on various medical devices, they found potentially dangerous interference in more than 15 percent of cases.
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It may make you feel better to see a hospital orderly wiping down every surface in your room with an anti-bacterial wipe. But according to a new study, that wipe isn’t killing bacteria on contact, and may be simply picking up bacteria from one surface and distributing it to others.
In an era where antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” like MRSA are a growing threat in hospitals, nurses and orderlies have understandably been wielding the wipes diligently. But when a team led by microbiologist Gareth Williams tested wipes after their use at several hospitals in Wales, they found that MRSA in particular could easily be spread by those handy little moist towelettes.
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