Being the intern on night float is a harrowing, and sometimes dangerous, experience. Inexperience, combined with cross-covering entire services, leads to mistakes.
Paul Levy writes about the system some hospitals are implementing to help deal with this issue.
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{ 2 comments }
night float was pretty miserable.
id get 2 beepers and run around all night long. about 4-5 admissions too. by morning id have 5 sheets of paper with peoples names (maybe 40 names) and room numbers and all other info on them. if they were really sick i might see them up to 3 times in the night. usually never to see them again. too bad there isnt a better way to do things.
It’s not inexperience – it’s understaffing. No other enterprise runs with twice as much staff but identical demand for service at night.
Imagine if a hotel, restaurant, or even a jail decided to have less staff when demand increased. People come to hospitals very sick at all hours of the day and night, but there are fewer people present at night, and they are each supposed to do more work.
If we had less workers (even if all of them were experienced in their fields) on the day shift but twice as many “young, inexperienced” people at night, the day shift would have worse outsomes.
Sometimes you just need more help.
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