How Does Increased Workload Affect Patient Safety?

Medical experts have long been working to identify potential solutions to the problem of medical malpractice.

It is not difficult to identify preventable errors in the medical field, but it takes a huge effort to implement changes to prevent these errors. Though awareness is part of dealing with the problem, awareness may not be enough to bring about a change. For example, every medical professional is aware of the devastating error of operating on the wrong patient or body part. However, these errors occur more frequently than we imagine. Implementing procedures such as checklists have been shown to reduce errors, so by implementing them, medical errors may be significantly reduced.

Attending Physician Workload

A report published by The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality focused on the role of workload on patient safety.The report explained that already there has been enough research on the effect of resident physician workload on patient safety. Resident physicians are the doctors that spend the first few years of their career working under the guidance of senior doctors. Research has revealed that long work hours lead to an increase in preventable medical errors. For this reason, many hospitals have reduced work hours for resident physicians.

However, it is likely that reduced resident work hours would add to the workload of attending physicians. So, an attempt was made to study the effect of increased physician workload on the rate of medical errors. For the purpose of research, a number of medical professionals were surveyed to learn about their work hours and the effect it has on the medical care they offer.

Research Findings

The researchers found that a large percentage of doctors agreed that an increased workload had a negative effect on the medical care they provided to their patients. Some doctors even agreed that a higher workload often led to medical errors. About a fourth of the doctors claimed that because of higher workload and time pressure they were unable to answer patient questions or properly discuss available treatment options with patients.

Only 20 percent of the doctors admitted that their patient care level was too high to ensure patient safety. A small percentage of respondents admitted to committing errors. Quite shockingly, 10 percent of the doctors admitted that they could not follow up on certain complications or lab results in a timely manner because they had to attend to too many patients in too short a time. A significant percentage (7%) claimed that they made treatment mistakes or medication errors as a result of the workload.

Our St. Louis medical malpractice attorneys believe that such research results should not be taken lightly, and that measures should be implemented to address the issues. If you have suffered harm because of a doctor’s negligence, call the Zevan and Davidson Law Firm at (314) 588-7200.