Recently I posted about the NHS patients getting better surgical care in the evening hours, but here in the US, the opposite occurs. Who is the obvious candidate for an evening position, the hospitalist! Of course, skilled nurses and other health care staff are also needed in the evening and wee hours of the morning as well. This could be the start of a potential new position, “The Nocturnal Hospitalist”….BD
Hospitals are waking up to the fact that substandard care on nights and weekends is endangering patients - giving new meaning to the term "graveyard shift." Patients suffer higher rates of death, complications and medical errors when they are treated during thinly staffed off hours. Now, some hospitals are taking steps to improve safety and reduce their own legal liability from mishaps.
People get sick 24 hours a day, but there is a stark discrepancy in the quality of care on nights and weekends" when 50 percent to 70 percent of patients may be admitted, says David Shulkin, chief executive of New York's Beth Israel Medical Center. Shulkin has been making midnight rounds at his hospital on a regular basis to evaluate the quality of care and the need for additional staffing. In a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, he called on counterparts at other hospitals to do the same.
They are called hospitalist.
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