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It's impossible for doctors and nurses to pass on everything they know about a patient during shift changes, which can be seen in the form of spikes in deaths a
by austhrow743 2y ago
It's impossible for doctors and nurses to pass on everything they know about a patient during shift changes, which can be seen in the form of spikes in deaths and other bad outcomes right after care is handed over to a new team. Hence why they tend to do longer shifts.
That effect is eventually balanced out by exhaustion, sleep deprivation, etc taking the same toll they do on everyone. Theoretically If you could reduce the impact of sleep deprivation, we could push shift lengths further, reduce the amount of turnover in carers a patient sees even more, and receive even further benefits in health outcomes.
- pests 2y agoI think the claim in your opening sentence is unproven. Can we try to improve the handoff problem before trying to make sleep deprived doctors and nurses able to suffer for even longer?
- binary132 2y agoWhat I just read sounded like “the solution to doctor burnout is even more doctor burnout” so that couldn’t possibly be what you really meant.
- Nevermark 2y agoI would frame this as using creatine as a welcome mitigation for existing burnout from long shifts. Not enabling the same burnout for even longer shifts. Burnout and just simple short term fatigue both also create patient risk. We have drugs that would allow very long completely alert shifts, with few side effects for single use. But there is no way to do that regularly in a mentally (or physically) healthy sustainable way. I can see those being used by a battlefield medic, or in a disaster zone, for one off critical situations.