Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Health Information System, Sleepy Doc and Lost in Translation

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article researchers found that medical interns need more sleeps to prevent serious medical errors in intensive care unit (full text here). Well, it is no surprise to us. The study implied that more interns need to be introduced into ward to avoid extended shift of one intern. Interestingly, there was a counter-argument in the same issue (full text here) pointing out that increasing shifts will cause information loss or distortion between shifts. To me, both arguments were reasonable and sound. Which model of scheduling do you prefer? Do you want to be seen by a sleepy Doctor or by several different residents during the stay? What do you think health information system can help in this situation?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home