Regulation of residents’ hours makes patient handoffs a source of error. This is a problem in the UK as well:
Agreeing that missing information could sometimes put patients at risk, he said: “If you don’t follow up on certain test results or if you are not aware of certain conditions that have been discovered then you can miss the opportunity to do something about it.”
Another problem his research uncovered was that sometimes on call staff were simply not made aware that patients had been admitted at all.
