Doctors' working hours: can the medical profession afford to let the courts decide what is reasonable?

Doctorsʼ Stress Responses and Poor Communication Performance in Simulated Bad-News Consultations

“…Such an interpretation is consistent with literature reports that doctors typically work long hours and experience high levels of burnout and fatigue [35][36][37]52,53 and that doctors affected by burnout and fatigue perform more poorly in the workplace than their nonaffected peers. 38,39 However, in this study, we did not find poor communication performance to be related to doctors' inexperience, perceived stress, or psychological distress. Moreover, novices and experts did not differ on perceived stress, psychological distress, or burnout measures.…”

“…37 The literature has previously linked these states to poor clinical performance and decreased competence in doctors. 18,38,39 No studies, however, have previously evaluated factors that may be related to poor communication performance during specific stressful encounters such as BBN.…”

Monitoring vital signs using early warning scoring systems: a review of the literature

“…Institutions need to develop systems that are as ‘failsafe’ as possible. The roles of fatigue (Nocera & Khursandi 1998) and sleep deprivation (Leape 1997) also need further research.…”

Sleep as restitution: an introduction

“…It is highly probable that this also concerns on‐call work in health care although there is a remarkable absence of accident analysis in this sector of work. However, it is well known that at least self‐reported major medical mistakes are related to fatigue on call [28], and (simulated) medical procedures involve more mistakes or take a longer time to carry out [29, 30].…”